The test was obvious the minute the Lakers got their schedule for the 2024-25 season.
They would make one trip to Sacramento to face the Kings twice, two games against a team whose pace and physicality have been the difference in multiple years of dominance against over the Lakers.
If, somehow, the Lakers were able to beat the Kings in their first meeting at the Golden 1 Center, they’d need to try and do it again a day and a half later.
Through the first few months of the schedule, the Lakers had seemingly exorcised their Kings demons. They beat them in the first week of the season, quieting the noise around Domantas Sabonis’ dominance against Anthony Davis. Thursday, in their first game against the Kings in Sacramento, Davis was terrific in a game Lakers coach JJ Redick called his “favorite” win of the season.
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To do it again? That would require sustained attention, sustained effort and sustained execution. It would take, as coach Doc Rivers used to tell Redick’s Clippers teams, the Lakers needing to hang onto the rope in the game of tug-of-war.
The Lakers led by as many as 10 points late in the fourth, before the game started to slip through their hands. After blown coverages, bad offensive possessions and missed free throws, there were just threads of that rope still in the Lakers’ hands.
It wasn’t much. But they were there.
Rui Hachimura’s offensive rebound after Davis missed a pair of free throws with 12.1 seconds left kept the Kings from getting a chance to tie the score or take the lead, the Lakers hanging on for a gritty 103-99 win.
James scored 32 points one game after setting the NBA’s all-time minutes record for regular-season games, bullying the Kings on the offensive end while grabbing four steals on the defensive end. D’Angelo Russell scored 20 off the bench, and Davis finished with 15 rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots on a tough offensive night.
The Lakers, who have won three straight, host Detroit on Monday in Los Angeles.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
