The Los Angeles Lakers were able to close out their first-round series in six games, beating the Memphis Grizzlies in dominant fashion at Crypto.com Arena on Saturday night.
The win was big as not only are the Lakers advancing to the second round, but they will get some much-needed rest as their next series won’t begin until Tuesday. The reason for that is their opponent has not yet been determined with the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors being the only first-round series to go seven games.
Game 7 between the two teams will take place on Sunday afternoon, and the Lakers will surely be watching to see who they will be playing next.
It will be a Pacific Division opponent for sure, but Dennis Schroder said the Lakers do not have a preference between the Kings and Warriors.
“It doesn’t matter, we just focus on us,” Schroder said. “Try to do the best as possible, try to play like tonight and we’ll be in great shape. For us, like I said, it doesn’t matter who wins. Sunday at 12:30 I think we’re probably gonna watch the game and then we’ll know and start prepping.”
Regardless of who the Lakers play between the Kings and Warriors, they will be facing a very potent backcourt offensively, so Schroder discussed what the keys will be for him and his teammates.
“I think defensively, that’s what we got to keep our head on. If we’re in the right place and we do it for 48 minutes, we’ve shown that we’re capable of winning against everybody. We just got to keep doing it for 48 minutes on the defensive end and then on the offensive end, ball movement and everybody sharing it.”
One thing the Lakers will be rooting for is Game 7 going as many overtimes as possible to wear out whoever wins between the Kings and Warriors.
The Lakers are the No. 7 seed so they will not have homecourt advantage regardless of who they play. But the way L.A. is playing, they may be considered the favorite anyway.
Davis says Lakers let play do talking against Grizzlies
During the Lakers’ first-round series, the Grizzlies did a lot of trash-talking, especially Dillon Brooks.
The Lakers did not participate though and Anthony Davis explained the reason for that was they wanted to let their play do the talking instead. After the series was over though, LeBron James had to send out a couple of social media posts in response to Brooks and the Grizzlies.
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