a quality win<\/a>. Not only did they beat a team with an above .500 record, but they also had a good day in the Western Conference standings. The teams above and below them in the standings \u2014 specifically the Houston Rockets and Phoenix Suns \u2014 both lost, making the win over Philadelphia even more impactful.<\/p>\nSo that means that the second game between the Lakers and Warriors this season will once again feature an incomplete cast just like the season opener.<\/p>\n
That said, the purple and gold will still have LeBron James \u2014 who missed the season debut against the Warriors \u2014 as well as Austin Reaves, who will take charge of the offense with Don\u010di\u0107 out.<\/p>\n
What the Lakers looked like in the second half against the Sixers will pretty much be how they will be in the midst of Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s absence. LA is still a tough team to beat, especially when Reaves is playing like an All-Star and with James doing the same. On top of that, they\u2019ve also had the 11th-best defense in the NBA over the last 10 games, and it\u2019d be nice if they can keep that up.<\/p>\n
The Warriors team that the Lakers will see on Saturday may be without two of their best players, but they\u2019re still a very scrappy unit. They outplayed the Suns in the clutch in their last game, completing a comeback victory. Expect them to play their brand of basketball, which involves the usual motion offense, lots of 3-point attempts (they lead the league in that) and a pesky defense.<\/p>\n
This game could also be Luke Kennard\u2019s first one as a Laker. He is currently listed as questionable, as the trade is still pending. His 3-point shooting would give the purple and gold an additional boost.<\/p>\n
Despite some star power missing, expect this Lakers-Warriors matchup to still have some extra intensity. Let\u2019s see if LA can use their home crowd to ignite them to a win on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers homestand continues on Saturday afternoon when they take on the Golden State Warriors. Los Angeles looks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":587469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,64012,4033,4043,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-587468","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-lakers","11":"tag-lakers","12":"tag-lalakers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","15":"tag-los-angeles-lakers-discussion","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-losangeleslakers","18":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=587468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/587468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/587469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=587468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=587468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=587468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}