Los Angeles Lakers vs. Minnesota Timberwolves

You found this. Be the first one here.

The same opponent twice in three days at the end of a season is not a scheduling accident anybody enjoys, and it produces a strange, familiar, almost domestic kind of game - both sides know exactly what the other is doing and have run out of ways to disguise it. What is left is execution, which is the purest version of the sport and the one that rewards paying close attention. A Friday tip means downtown is at its loudest before and after, so the game sits inside a proper evening rather than being the whole of it. By the second week of April the building has started counting home games out loud. There are not many of these left, and everybody in the room knows the number. Arrive in time for the warmup, which at this stage of a season is shorter and sharper than it is in November and tells you a good deal about who is actually playing tonight.