This is the first meeting between the two teams this season.<\/p>\n
Start time and TV schedule<\/p>\n
Watch: Spectrum Sportsnet<\/p>\n
The Lakers will be greeted back at Crypto.com Arena by a Pacers team that\u2019s currently struggling. The Pacers are lottery-bound and there\u2019s really no reason for them to aim for anything but a top pick at this point of the season. It\u2019s understood league-wide that this season was a gap year for them after Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in the Finals.<\/p>\n
That said, the Lakers will still have to earn this one. In fairness to them, they\u2019ve been performing well on the second night of back-to-backs as of late, winning three of their last four. They should win this one simply because they\u2019re the better team. It\u2019s also the perfect opportunity to quickly bounce back after losing a close game in Denver.<\/p>\n
Without Haliburton, Indiana ranks dead last in the league in offense. They average just 111.4 points per game and don\u2019t rebound the ball very well. Outside of Pascal Siakam, they don\u2019t have much of a consistent threat on offense. Their defense doesn\u2019t make up for their offense either because they don\u2019t have the pieces to protect the rim, especially with Ivica Zubac out. More notably, Indiana doesn\u2019t have an answer for Los Angeles\u2019 main guys.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why it would be nice to see the Lakers put together a nice bounceback game, one that will begin this crucial five-game home stand on a strong note. Hopefully, they shoot better than they did on Thursday night, especially if this one goes down to the wire.<\/p>\n
The Lakers should be able to feast in the paint even more and defend without fouling so much. It\u2019s the defense\u2019s responsibility to make sure that Siakam, Aaron Nesmith and Andrew Nembhard don\u2019t play extraordinary well.<\/p>\n
One of the perks of the NBA regular season is that there\u2019s always an opportunity to bounce back, especially after losing such a winnable game. Let\u2019s see if the purple and gold can do just on Friday against the Pacers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is the first meeting between the two teams this season. Start time and TV schedule Watch: Spectrum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642707,"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-642706","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":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116181137511905151","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642706","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=642706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}