Kings-Lakers Preview: A Must-Win Game To Avoid Play-In. Plus Gabe Vincent Back in March?

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers may not have been playing truly inspired basketball, the kind that gets fans and media fired up and primed for the postseason, but they have, save that putrid stretch following the In-Season Tournament, won more than they've lost. Now, coming off a very impressive home win over the conference-leading Oklahoma City Thunder, the Lakers face another test against a playoff-caliber team.

But this time, the Sacramento Kings come in weaker than LA, having been in a weeks long semi-slump that has dropped them into the back half of the playoff bracket, only 1.5 games ahead of the Lakers.

This is a big opportunity for the Lakers to gain ground on a vulnerable squad, and give themselves a shot to hold the tiebreaker over the Kings, which could obviously come in handy by the end of the year. Lose, and that goes out the window (Sacramento won the first two games of the season series, with both games coming very early in the year). So what do the Lakers need to watch out for? Start with three point shooting. The Kings take a ton of them, but some of their best shooters (De'Aaron Fox, Keegan Murray) are in big slumps right now. They need to keep it that way. In strength vs. weakness, the Kings both tend to put teams on the line a lot, and don't get there much themselves. That plays into strengths on both sides for LA they will certainly look to exploit.

But fundamentally, we're going to spend a lot of time talking about Domantas Sabonis vs. Anthony Davis, because the Lakers need the OKC version of AD, as opposed to the Denver edition. But Sabonis is a matchup much closer to Nikola Jokic than Chet Holmgren.

Finally... some good news about Gabe Vincent! He might be back faster than some expected. So what will the Lakers do with him once he returns?

HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky

SEGMENT 1: Huge huge huge huge game against Sacramento tonight at the Crypt. AD needs to be big, again.

SEGMENT 2: What to watch for. How can the Lakers exploit Sacramento's weaknesses?

SEGMENT 3: What happens when Vincent returns? Because it's looking like he might, via Shams!

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