LeBron James: 'Pretty Cool' Lakers Will Finish Above .500 After 2-10 Start to Season

After Friday's victory against the Phoenix Suns, the Los Angeles Lakers are guaranteed to finish with a record above .500.

That notion probably wasn't expected amid the team's dismal opening to the regular season in which it started 2-10 following a pair of five-game losing streaks. Star forward LeBron James reflected on Los Angeles' harrowing road throughout the 2022-23 season.

"I was just telling AD [Anthony Davis], I was like, 'Man, can you believe that we're going to finish this season above .500? After everything that's gone on this season?'" James said. "We've turned this thing around. And it's the regular season, obviously, there's a lot more basketball to be played. But to know that we're going to finish a few games above .500? It's pretty cool."

The Lakers (42-39) will be just the sixth team in NBA history to finish a regular season with a winning record after starting the year 2-10 or worse. A slew of trade-deadline additions helped the team perform much better over the second half of the season.

Los Angeles sits in seventh place in the Western Conference entering Sunday's season finale against the Utah Jazz, but the No. 5 through No. 9 seeds are all possibilities depending on how other teams fare in their final games.

However things play out, the Lakers are surely proud of the turnaround they made this year.

"I'm definitely happy that we were able to fight through that adversity and try to find the right pieces that fit and we were able to march on through," Lakers head coach Darvin Ham said. "Our work is not done by a longshot, so it'll be great at some point to think back, but hopefully I'll be thinking about this the first year after we're holding the trophy or something. ... In the short form, it's a lot to be proud of. And in the long form, we've got more work to do."