LeBron James warns the Lakers ahead of key stretch of the season

The Los Angeles Lakers will close out the season with multiple games they should win with ease. But as we’ve seen in theNBA — and particularly with Darvin Ham’s team — there’s no such thing of a sure thing in the league.

Considering that, LeBron James doesn’t want his players to overlook their upcoming rivals. They’ll be on the road to square off against the Brooklyn Nets, Toronto Raptors, and Washington Wizards.

So, even though those games shouldn’t be very demanding for a team like the Lakers, he doesn’t want them to sleep on their laurels and just go through the motions:

LeBron James Warns His Teammates Ahead Of Upcoming Eastern Conference Road Trip

“That can’t be the thinking that ‘we playing sub .500 teams.’ That will get you burned every time so we gotta play our game and we gotta understand that Brooklyn beat us last time when we played them in LA l and we look forward to that challenge. They got some guys that can beat you: Cam Thomas, Mikal Bridges, we know those guys are pros and we gotta be ready for them,” the four-time NBA champion said.

The Lakers have spent most of the season at the No. 9 spot in the Western Conference, and that’s highly unlikely to change at this point, even if they win all their remaining games.

James has already hinted at sitting out some games as he looks to stay sharp for the Play-In Tournament and a potential postseason series, so the rest of the team will have to pick up the slack.

The Lakers have some depth and should be able to get past any of these rivals without their 39-year-old on the court, and if that’s not the case, perhaps they didn’t deserve to make the playoffs to begin with.