Sunday is the final day of the regular season, but the matchup between the Warriors and Clippers is virtually a playoff game, writes Janis Carr of The Orange County Register. The winner will wrap up an automatic playoff berth, while the loser could slip to seventh place and a spot in the play-in tournament.
“High stakes, huh?” Clippers center Ivica Zubac said after Friday’s one-point victory at Sacramento. “It’s been like that forever. Imagine if we didn’t win all these games.”
L.A. has won all three meetings between the teams this season, but they haven’t faced each other since December 27. That was about a week before Kawhi Leonard made his season debut after missing the first 34 games due to knee issues and a little more than a month before Golden State added Jimmy Butler in a major deadline trade. Both teams have been moving up the standings since then, heading toward Sunday’s clash.
“It’s basketball. The outcome is going to tell what happens,” Leonard said. “So, it’s just going out and playing, that’s all you can do. Play and have fun. Everybody wants to win coming down the stretch.”
There’s more from the Pacific Division:
- After wrapping up the No. 3 seed Friday night, the Lakers are very confident as they approach the playoffs, per Khobi Price of The Orange County Register. Austin Reaves said it felt like five regular seasons wrapped into one because of all the roster changes, but the team wound up in a good place. “We feel very comfortable with what we got in the locker room, from front office, coaching staff to players,” Reaves said. “We’re all locked into one goal and that’s to win a championship. We can play different ways and then we got the best player to ever play the game (in LeBron James) and then probably, arguably (someone who is) going to be one of the best players to ever play the game with Luka (Doncic). And then around that, we have guys that are just bought into winning and that’s what you need when you’re trying to make a run like that.”
- The Lakers made a great decision by hiring J.J. Redick as head coach and were fortunate that UConn’s Dan Hurley turned down their six-year, $70MM offer last June, contends columnist Bill Plaschke of The Los Angeles Times (subscription required).
- Warriors coach Steve Kerr said Friday that he hasn’t given up on a front line of Butler, Draymond Green and Jonathan Kuminga, even though the experiment hasn’t gone well so far, according to Sam Gordon of The San Francisco Chronicle. Golden State has a minus-24.9 net rating in the 38 minutes they’ve been on the court together, and Gordon notes that none of them can stretch the floor as a consistent three-point threat. Gordon also observes that the Butler trade left Kuminga with a reduced role. “He’s handled things really well. He’s working. He’s staying ready. He’s playing hard when he’s out there,” Kerr said. “But the bottom line is when we traded for Jimmy, Draymond became our (power forward) and (center).”