Should Lakers Want To Face Sacramento Or Golden State In Round 2?

Which team should LA fans root for this afternoon?

At 12:30 p.m. PT on ABC, your Los Angeles Lakers will no doubt either be soaking in ice baths or luxuriating in their cushy Brentwood living rooms while their two possible opponents for the second round of the Western Conference playoffs square off in Sacramento.

The upstart Sacramento Kings, led by All-Stars De'Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis (although Sabonis has been pretty underwhelming throughout much of this series), host the defending champion Golden State Warriors today for the right to battle LA starting on Tuesday.

So which of these two northern California teams would be easier for their southern California neighbors to vanquish?

The more veteran Warriors do have that championship pedigree, but the fearless Kings boasted the NBA's best offense (and one of its best in history) during the regular season. Both clubs are relatively healthy. Sacramento finished with a better season record, 48-34, while Golden State was a mere 44-38, with a miserable 11-30 road record.

In terms of head-to-head regular season matchups, the Kings boast a 3-1 record against the Lakers this year, while the Lakers have gone 3-1 against the Warriors. To be fair, the Kings haven't played against the Lakers since January 18th, meaning all four of their bouts transpired before Rob Pelinka's clutch makeover of the team's roster around stars Anthony Davis and LeBron James. 

Outside the two Hall of Famers, guards Austin Reaves and Dennis Schröder are the only playoff rotation Lakers holdovers the team has retained since January (unless you count Wenyen Gabriel's brief cameos in the final two games of LA's series against the Memphis Grizzlies). It's not really fair to assess LA's lackluster regular season performance against the Kings this year.

LA's biggest strength might be the two-way interior play of Davis. The Warriors' best big man, Draymond Green, is feisty, but significantly smaller and lighter than AD. Sabonis can actually give Davis fits defensively, drawing him outside of the paint and thus opening lanes for driving Kings guards like Fox and ex-Laker Malik Monk. 

Stephen Curry, though still extraordinary, is 35, while Draymond Green and Klay Thompson are both 33. The 38-year-old James and 30-year-old Davis could use some contemporaries, not the youthful agility of the Kings.

The Warriors' edge, of course, is their insane three-point shooting. Golden State led the entire league in its 43.2 triple attempts, and was second behind only the Philadelphia 76ers in conversion success rate at 38.5%.

Another big edge LA enjoys is in drawing fouls. Los Angeles, by benefit of being Los Angeles, is the league leader in free throw attempts this season, at 26.6. The Kings rank seventh, at 25.1, while the Warriors' 20.2 slots them dead last among all 30 NBA teams. Obviously that's somewhat connected to Golden State's heavy reliance on three-point shooting, which keeps them out of the paint more than most clubs. But this is yet another reason for Lakers fans to hope their team draws the Warriors.

Despite that ineffable title-winning experience, I think the Lakers would prefer to face off against the older Warriors chiefly for the Davis interior advantage and the relatively similar levels of athleticism.

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