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Lakers' LeBron James: 'I Kind of Stopped Looking at' NBA Standings Amid Play-In Race


Garrett Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images

LeBron James isn't overly concerned with the Western Conference standings.

The Los Angeles Lakers superstar recently told reporters that he's focused on taking things day by day instead of closely monitoring the standings as the team battles for postseason positioning.

"It has been flip-flopping so much over the last few weeks that I kind of stopped looking at it and kind of focused on each game at a time," James said, per Ryan Ward of Lakers Nation. "Obviously, we know where we are right now, but are going to continue to play good basketball."

Los Angeles currently sits at 39-32 on the season as a whole, good enough for the No. 9 seed in the West. The Lakers are three games back of the sixth-seeded Phoenix Suns, which would allow the team to automatically qualify for the playoffs and avoid the play-in tournament.

However, head coach Darvin Ham's squad is also at risk of falling out of the play-in picture entirely as Los Angeles is just three and a half games up on the Houston Rockets at No. 11. With just 11 games remaining in the regular season, every contest will be extremely important for James and the Lakers.

Los Angeles has been improving as of late, emerging victorious in five of its past seven contests while currently riding a three-game winning streak. This included a defeat of the Indiana Pacers on Sunday in which the Lakers put up a season-high 150 points.

As for James, he's continued to play at a high level and help the team rack up wins. In 62 starts, the NBA's all-time leading scorer is averaging 25.4 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 8.1 assists per game while shooting 53.0 percent from the field and 40.6 percent from behind the arc.

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