Los Angeles Lakers vs. Oklahoma City Thunder

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Oklahoma City arrives roughly twice a year and both visits are worth arranging your week around. A team built almost entirely out of players nobody else wanted badly enough, playing a style that is genuinely difficult to defend and even harder to look away from, is the sort of opponent that makes a Tuesday feel like an occasion. The eight o'clock tip is the giveaway: that hour is chosen for a national audience rather than for anybody who has to be at work on Wednesday. The building will be fuller than a January Tuesday has any right to be. Leave late, come straight from work, and accept that Wednesday morning is going to be difficult. Some fixtures are worth the cost and the schedule-makers have already told you which one this is. Buy ahead rather than on the day. National-television fixtures are the one category where the resale market firms up in the final week instead of softening.