Los Angeles Lakers vs. Sacramento Kings

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The second meeting with the same opponent inside two months is when familiarity starts to bite. Whatever happened in November is still in the room, carried by both benches and by everybody who watched it, and a fixture that looked like filler on the schedule has quietly acquired an argument. Sacramento travels down in numbers that surprise people who assume nobody cares about that rivalry except the north. A Friday tip downtown is the busiest the area gets all week and worth arriving early for on its own merits. By late January the standings have become real enough that a conference game stops being decorative. Come for the one the schedule-makers did not intend to matter and often does. Arrive early enough to see which end the visiting support has gathered behind; for this fixture it is usually larger than anybody from this city expects it to be. Friday nights downtown also mean everything stays open afterwards, so the evening does not have to end at the final buzzer the way a Tuesday one does.