The No. 7 seed LA Lakers will face the No. 8 seed Golden State on Wednesday. The winner of Lakers-Dubs will play the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the NBA playoffs.
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The eighth-seeded Warriors will play the seventh-seeded Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday at Staples Center, with one of the Western Conference’s last two spots in the NBA playoffs up for grabs. The Portland Trail Blazers clinched the sixth seed by beating the Denver Nuggets on Sunday, rendering the Lakers’ result against the New Orleans Pelicans irrelevant due to tiebreakers.
OFFICIAL: Dubs will take on the Lakers on Wednesday night in Los Angeles.
Let’s get it, #DubNation pic.twitter.com/yIa3s8MKxx
— Golden State Warriors (@warriors) May 17, 2021
The Warriors-Lakers winner will advance to play the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the NBA playoffs. The loser must beat the winner of the Memphis Grizzlies and San Antonio Spurs in a Friday home game. That game’s winner will play the top-seeded Utah Jazz in the first round.
Golden State (2019) and Los Angeles (2020) are the last two Western Conference champions, and the Lakers won an NBA championship just over seven months ago in the league’s bubble. LA won the regular-season series, beating Golden State two out of three times and averaging a 28.5-point margin of victory.
The Warriors went a combined 8-1 in first-round playoff series against Anthony Davis’ Pelicans in 2015 and ’18. During that timeframe, Golden State squared off with LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in four consecutive NBA Finals. The Warriors beat the Cavs in three out of four, infamously losing in 2016 after blowing a three-games-to-one lead.
The Lakers were flying high and sat atop the Western Conference for a large chunk of the first half of the season, but things went downhill when Anthony Davis suffered an Achilles injury against the Nuggets.
Los Angeles went into a slump heading into the All-Star break, and things got worse when LeBron James suffered an ankle sprain after All-Star weekend.
The Lakers’ stayed afloat with both their superstars out and acquired Andre Drummond to slow their descent. Los Angeles can’t be considered an underdog with all its talent and experience.
The Warriors took their lumps at the beginning of the year. They tried to incorporate Andrew Wiggins, Kelly Oubre, and James Wiseman into their system.
The Dubs got blown out quite a few times early. But soon they began to figure things out as the year went on thanks to Stephen Curry’s legendary shooting stroke.
GSW’s new pieces are starting to mesh and Draymond Green has held things together defensively and as a playmaker.
Nobody wants to play the NBA’s leading scorer in the first round. If Curry gets hot, some of the Western Conference’s frontrunners could be in trouble.
