You’ve read about the Wild West, the U.S. frontier in the late-1800s. Wyatt Earp and “Billy the Kid” and those fellas.

And then there’s “The Wild Wild West,” 1999’s “bombastic, manic … bizarre misfire” of a movie. The one with Will Smith and Salma Hayek?

And now, the Wild, Wild, Wild West. The NBA in 2023. Also bombastic, manic and bizarre. Starring LeBron James and Kawhi Leonard. Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, maybe Zion Williamson. Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. All these famous players in some peril as the postseason comes barreling down the tracks at them.

Because when the sun rose Tuesday, fewer than two weeks before the end of the regular season, nine Western Conference teams — including your Lakers and Clippers — remained bunched up in fourth through 12th place in the Western Conference standings, just five games separating them all.

Three of those teams will make the playoffs proper. Four are bound for the NBA’s precarious play-in tournament. Two will be left standing, out of luck and dumbstruck when the music stops.

That so many teams are still so engaged so late in the season is a credit to the play-in, a mechanism that’s done its job of keeping hope alive — even with the Victor Wembanyama draft sweepstakes on the horizon.

Enjoy the moment. Because even if the conference feels as open as a prairie, vast and limitless as the Great Plains, that doesn’t make it so.

Just because your team has a chance to get into the playoffs doesn’t mean it has a chance once it’s there, not reasonably, not against the teams at the top.

Denver, Memphis and, yes, Sacramento might not strike fear into the hearts of fans of the teams behind them. Especially those teams with ring-wielding superstars calling and taking the shots. Teams with champs like James, Leonard and Curry giving their side a heavyweight puncher’s chance.

But the Nuggets and Grizzlies, and even the Kings, they ought to scare you.

Because they know what they’re doing, and they know how to do it together.

While so many teams have toiled fitfully this season, trying to establish some rhythm while navigating injuries, personnel changes and ever-more-frequent load management, Denver, Memphis and, yes, even Sacramento have proved reliable, high-functioning units.

Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. have been teammates in West-leading Denver for four years, all under Coach Michael Malone. They’ve known the script.

For second-place Memphis, Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Dillon Brooks have shared the court since 2019-20, directed the whole time by Coach Taylor Jenkins, with Desmond Bane joining the chorus the next season. So even with Morant’s recent off-court issues, they stayed in key, on the same page of the same hymn book.

How much does continuity (read: availability) matter? The spry young Kings – who have had players miss an NBA-low total of 43 games – are 45-30, in third place and about to end their 16-year playoff drought.

Meanwhile the veteran Clippers, at 40-36, are toggling between fourth and fifth-ish. A team with the grandest of championship aspirations has had players miss 121 games, a tally that’s going to grow, unfortunately, after All-Star Paul George sustained a scary knee injury last week.

The Clippers also brought in four new players at or around the trade deadline, including former Laker Russell Westbrook at point guard. And Coach Tyronn Lue has indicated just this week that, with just six regular-season games left, including two in a row at Memphis, he’d do the thing fans had, for months, been clamoring for by replacing Marcus Morris Sr. in the starting lineup with Nicolas Batum.

Even when the Clippers coast to victories like Monday’s 124-112 dismantling of the Chicago Bulls, it’s hard to trust a team that went 6-8 before that.

And the Lakers – improved at 37-38 – aren’t exactly tearing down the homestretch, either.

TV networks and the team’s fans might want badly to will the Lakers into contention, but they’ve lost four of their past 10 games, including to the lowly Houston Rockets, the struggling Dallas Mavericks and the middling Bulls – who spoiled James’ return from a foot injury on Sunday.

The Lakers are incorporating a bunch of new guys too, trying to align them with James and Anthony Davis while experimenting with the correct doses of Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt, Malik Beasley and, when he’s available, D’Angelo Russell.

This collection of Lakers is obviously better equipped than those who started the season 2-10. And they might be confident that they have enough, with James and Davis at the forefront, to beat anyone, anywhere, any day.

But a team doesn’t become a contender on April 10 if it wasn’t one on April 9, the last day of the regular season.

Before then, the work-in-progress Lakers and Clippers – like the work-in-progress Phoenix Suns, Minnesota Timberwolves, Golden State Warriors, New Orleans Pelicans and Mavericks, all of whom either aren’t whole, are just becoming whole or are just looking very different – are going to be hard-pressed to manufacture the chemistry to compete with Denver, Memphis and Sacramento. Or Milwaukee or Boston, out in the East.

Maybe they don’t think they need it. Maybe you don’t.

But I’d be more confident in the prospects of the team that can recite its plays in its sleep than one fumbling around in the dark, looking for the light switch.