Officially past the halfway mark of the National Basketball Association (NBA) season, now is a perfect time to revisit my preseason predictions and see how they aged. Was I right? Was I wrong? Am I truly a sports connoisseur? Or am I a fraud? 

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In my predictions from California Love: a look into our four teams as NBA season begins, I predicted, “Out of the four California-based teams, the best teams to make a run for a championship are the Lakers, followed by the Clippers and Warriors, depending on availability.” The Lakers are currently the sixth seed in the Western Conference, with the Warriors being the eighth seed and the Clippers being the tenth seed. However, the Clippers have the most impressive record of seven and three in their last ten games, whereas the Lakers are five and five in their last ten. The Warriors are also seven and three in their last ten.

Injuries have, unfortunately, plagued all of the California teams. However, in Sacramento’s case, who are just objectively bad, listed at the 14 seed, don’t have much to report on besides Domantas Sabonis being injured and Russel Westbrook having a good year on an otherwise bad team. However, the Lakers’ “Big 3” of Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves, and Lebron James have all missed more than ten games, and James has only played 25 games so far.

The Warriors, with their older average age, have had multiple nights where their starters sit due to “injury management,” with players like Al Horford, who sit out on the second half of “back to backs” (the second game when teams play two days in a row). The Clippers have had injuries with players like Bradley Beal, who will miss the entire season, and various week-by-week injuries with players like Ivica Zubac, Derrick Jones Jr, and Bogdan Bogdanović. But their two stars, James Harden and Kawhi Leonard, have been able to stay healthy, more so than in the past.

My prediction from the article was: “Kawhi Leonard is arguably one of the best players in basketball, but hasn’t been able to stay fully healthy during the season for a very long time. He will be their X-factor, so to speak, and if he can remain on the court when the postseason comes, opposing offenses will struggle to defend the one-two combo of him and James Harden.”

Leonard and the Clippers are having a resurgence, following their very rocky start to the season, going 5-15 in their first twenty games. They have been able to turn it around to 13-7 in their last twenty games. Leonard is eighth in the association in points per game, averaging 28. The Clippers are hopeful to turn it around and sneak their way into the playoffs.

In another prediction, I speculated, “The Lakers have all the tools to be successful; it is just a matter of execution and figuring out team dynamics. They have three players all capable of handling the ball and being the first option, so based on how the team navigates that, it may be the difference between ring one for Dončić and five for James or another year of heartbreak.”

The Lakers have had many ups and downs; they have looked unstoppable, beating teams like the Spurs, but also losing to the Hornets and Kings. James has visibly taken a “backseat,” allowing Reaves and Dončić to take on the offensive workload, and it seems to be working fine for them. The Lakers, like all teams, have some flaws, like the questions surrounding DeAndre Ayton’s true ability to be their center and their bench production, but they could compete well against every team on any given night.

The Warriors have also shown flashes throughout the season. Steph Curry has lit up the stat sheet, scoring 49 and 47 points this season, and the emergence of their young players with Will Richard and Quentin Post has allowed them to remain “in the hunt” of a very competitive Western Conference. However, their true second option, Jimmy Butler, tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), and their next best “scorer”, Johnathan Kuminga, demanded a trade and didn’t play for a month. With Butler being 36 years old, and obviously going to miss the rest of the season and most of the next one, the team is going to have to have some internal conversations about their future, and whether or not they make moves at the deadline to compete for a title, or sell high and look to prepare for the future.

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If I had to predict how the season would end, I would think that the Lakers make it to the playoffs, the Clippers make it to the play-in tournament, the Warriors just miss the play-in, and the Kings remain at the bottom of the standings. My bold prediction is that the Lakers don’t make it past the second round of the playoffs. I would grade myself at a B- for my preseason predictions, and only time will tell how I do in the postseason.