Los Angeles Lakers vs. Toronto Raptors

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The day after Halloween is the most forgiving day in sport. Half the city is wrecked, nobody has plans that survived the weekend, and the clocks went back that same morning, so by the six o'clock tip it has already been dark for an hour and the whole evening has the strange borrowed feeling of a night that started early and owes you nothing. It is the correct game to bring the person who has been saying for two years that they would come to one sometime. Early start, no traffic in either direction, nothing riding on the result, and a Toronto side that travels with a quietly enormous expatriate following - the Canadian contingent in Los Angeles is larger and considerably better organised than anybody expects until they hear it during two anthems instead of one. Downtown on a Sunday evening in early November is about as pleasant as that neighbourhood gets all year, and you are home before nine with the night still technically intact. Come for the one that asks nothing of you.