Kings vs. Lakers Preview: Running For Your Jewels

After the best season opening loss the Kings have had in ten years, the Sacramento has packed their bags and hit the road for a skirmish against LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. Winners of their first two games, the Lakers will be playing on a second night of a back to back and… Okay are the casuals gone? Has your uncle from Santa Monica, who talks almost exclusively about getting mugged outside of “TCL Chinese Theater” and how the Palisades are really going down hill, left? Good. You really didn’t think that after the better part of 20 months away from this that I’d pass up the opportunity to dog walk the worst franchise in professional sports again, did you? If you’re here for analysis, for a good and solid understanding of the game at hand tonight, walk over to Elon Musk’s X.Com while its still semi-usable and search up Will Z or a host of other Sacramento based writers with more poise and professionalism in their pinkies than I have in my entire body.

I’m not here to impress. I’m here to depress, specifically any of you cosmetic Ozempic addicted, Mamba mentality slinging, Brentwood born and raised, such-a-crazy-commute exhibitionists. “Oh, we had a World Series game, a Lakers game, a USC football game, and two whole concerts tonight!” Okay, well I have a wife that loves me and DeMar DeRozan playing for my professional sports franchise and if only one of those things can be true, it’s still more than 97% of the vanity plates drivers out of the Valley can claim. My translator would bet my money on that.

Let’s talk Kings basketball.

When: Saturday, October 25th, 7:30 PM PST
Where: Yes-Its-Really-Still-Crypto-Dot-Com-Arena, Los Angeles, CA
TV: NBCSCA – Kyle Draper (play-by-play)
Radio: Sactown Sports 1140 AM

For Your Consideration

Once a Future King: I wish I could say that my time away has softened my views on the Lakers, that in my pursuit of wholeness, I climbed some distant peak and found a sage, wizened thinker, who after a lifetime of self reflection imparted on me to give up my petty grievances or face an eternity of regrets. I didn’t. I hate the Lakers. To paraphrase one of three lifelong Angelenos I still respect, I hate the way that they walk, the way that they talk, I hate the way that they dress, and if you asked me why, some shit is just cringeworthy, it ain’t even gotta be deep, I guess. There just isn’t a single thing to respect about them. I hate them the way they hated Jerry West. I only hope one day I can see the franchise fold in part due to the heartbreak that I caused them, and as they gasp and clutch for redemption and final conciliation, like the Lakers, I stay quiet till everything is.

The Lakers are everything that’s bad about this world – nepotism, cronyism, De’Angelo Russell. They’re a franchise populated by fail-sons and fail-daughters, by people who can’t tell the difference between a back clap and a back stab and are so used to doing both, they just stopped caring which was supposed to happen where, and to who. Where a father, rich in talent and success, can get so cocky in assuming his children will be the same, and so powerful that no one can stop them from placing them within the team body and then later, to have a TV show that foreshadows their exact plan to do so. At least Jerry Buss got an HBO prestige drama… all LeBron got was a Netflix original.

I guess this means I should talk about Bronny. I honestly have no ill-will against the kid. Being anyone’s son is hard enough, being the son of one of the great individual talents of the modern day must be impossible. Even with immense wealth and privilege, you will always be attached to the brand that is LeBron James – a teratoma, a growth on the side of an entire industry that is your father, with his hair and teeth and complexion, a part of his all encompassing narrative but also, apart. Carried by this entity, never fully able to be removed or grow on your own. LA for high school, LA for college, declare after a bad season because of a terrible circumstance and then its boom, LA for the NBA. The LeBron machine makes LeBron seem wholesome enough, but if this whole Ken Griffey wannabe thing was about setting his son up for the greatest success on the court, he’d have let him pick his school, counselled him to go back and play a few years and really become the player he could be. But it’s LeBron. The narrative needs the moment, to hell with Junior. Snap some pictures, I’m proud of you son for all I’ve accomplished.

God, if there isn’t ten thousand Bel Air sons pretending to live in Silver Lake that are in therapy for ten thousand versions of just that.

Moving on from someone I have genuine compassion for: nothing screams Los Angeles like losing a wealthier roommate who finally got sick of slumming it with you, and while you’re off pursuing a part-time podcast host with a history of drunk driving to fill the void, they’ve successfully begged their coked up, failed upward daddy to fork over some cash for a brand new place. The Lakers still try to push The Home That Bobby Bao Paid For as some sort of Madison Square Garden West and yet, The Clippers, who so loved their rich and steeped history there, moved to Inglewood to get away from it- the setting of every cop drama and up-from-your-bootstraps Oscar bait my local Blockbuster could handle for 30 years.

Best part is, if you think the arena is bad (it is), the team isn’t any better. Kobe Bryant is looking up at Lakers fans right now hinging their sanity all winter on Austin Reaves being a starting level shooting guard and Dalton Knecht being a Rookie of the Year candidate. 54% of Los Angeles has a screenplay in their glovebox and no one’s told them how played out the white savior stereotype is. No one’s told them they love them in two years either, but this isn’t relevant to today’s conversation. Did the Lakers beat the team that beat the Kings and then go on to beat the Suns last night? Sure. Congrats. The ligaments in KD and Bradley Beal’s bodies have the combined tensile strength of a microwaved string cheese stick and their bones the sturdiness of day old tostilocos. Anthony Davis remains the most frustrating player in the league, vacillating wildly between an MVP level player and 75 games of unavailability. LeBron is still LeBron (positive), De’Angelo Russell is still De’Angelo Russell (devastatingly negative). For every one espousing the Lakers having a comeback year on the account of their coach doing a Pat Riley impression instead of a Doc Rivers one: is a bench of Gabe Vincent,  Dalton Knecht, Max Christie (?), Jaxon Hayes (????) supposed to scare anyone?  “But, Will…Jarred Vanderbilt and Christian Wood are injured!” THEY MIGHT BE A BETTER TEAM FOR IT. I know Nana is safer sitting courtside and behind the home basket for the next few games!

I’d say the scariest person with feet on the hardwood for Los Angeles tomorrow night is Jack Nicholson, but even he has seemed to prefer wasting away to eternity in oblivious peace over watching his once glorious team play.

The right choice, Jack. I don’t blame you.

The Small Stuff

Eventually, this will be a section where I discuss little small, sillier items that I’ve observed over the season. So for this, just pretend I took the time to write about the sense of masculinity within the Lakers bros community. Nothing smaller or sillier than that.

Prediction

Bronny James becomes a decent basketball player. LeBron James comes to see his mistakes late in life and through great effort, is forgiven by his son. A volcano arises from the La Brea tarpits and destroys most of the surrounding area. Tommy Lee Jones is nowhere to be found.

Kings: 127, Lakers: like, 7 or so.