Los Angeles Lakers: Matchup four – Sacramento Kings
De’Aaron Fox and the Sacramento Kings currently stand at 28-36, good enough for a tie for ninth in the Western Conference. They are 3.5 games back of the Memphis Grizzlies for the eighth and final playoff spot.
The Lakers only got to play two games against Sacramento, but they did win both of them, the second coming on February 1 in convincing fashion.
The Kings look to win the starting five position battle 3-2, with the two for the Lakers being obvious while the point guard, shooting guard, and center (only slightly) go to the Kings. The two teams have relatively comparable stats off of the bench, and the big difference in the starters obviously comes from having LeBron James and Anthony Davis on the court together.
The Kings quite surprisingly play at one of the slowest paces in the league, while also having both an offense and defense (albeit forcing a lot of turnovers) in the bottom half of basketball. They are also not an amazing rebounding team.
De’Aaron Fox is an amazing young player, but he is not yet at the point where he will singlehandedly change the fate of a game. The Kings are not a great basketball team in any aspect whatsoever, and it’s gonna be at least another season before they are competing with the Lakers (assuming their title window is still as open as it is now).
Sacramento may make it a hard-fought series game in and game out, but I expect this series would be a clean sweep. The Lakers shouldn’t drop a game in this series unless De’Aaron Fox drops 60 points in a game and the Lakers are caught sleeping. Aside from that, this may be the least intimidating team the Lakers could face.