Jim Alexander: Mirjam, you were at last night’s Lakers-Clippers game – the last regular-season edition of the Hallway Series (or, to put it another way, Banner Wars). And I’m sure everyone in the building had to have been thinking the same thing as the Lakers turned a 21-point deficit into a 116-112 victory on the broad shoulders of LeBron James, as you noted in your column.
Lakers fan or Clippers fan, you’ve got to be thinking: “Wouldn’t this be a delicious seven-game postseason series?” We generally don’t get intramural wars in the postseason. The most prominent one I can think of was a Kings-Ducks second-round series in 2014, with the Kings rallying from a 3-2 deficit en route to their second Stanley Cup and the series ending with both teams saluting Teemu Selanne as he skated into the sunset. In Major League Soccer, there was a 2009 Galaxy-Chivas USA postseason matchup and a couple of more recent vintage between the Galaxy and LAFC in 2019 and 2022. Both of those were LAFC victories, and the former featured the sight of the Galaxy’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic making an indecent gesture toward an LAFC fan as he walked off the pitch to the locker room.
But the Lakers and Clippers? A best-of-seven sharing the building I still call Staples Center? Home-court advantage deciding how many times the Lakers’ championship banners are covered up? Bron and A.D. against Kawhi, PG and James Harden for at least four and maybe seven games straight, with all the mind games that come with a playoff series? I’m here for it, and I suspect every pro basketball fan in L.A. feels the same way.
Mirjam Swanson: Jim, WE NEED IT. C’mon, basketball gods!
We’ve waited long enough.
We’ve been teased long enough.
The Clippers and Lakers both made the playoffs in three of the past four years and six times overall as arena-mates – and it still hasn’t happened. The Lakers fell a game short of a 2006 second-round showdown when they lost Game 7 to the Phoenix Suns….
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