Los Angeles Lakers visit the Oklahoma City Thunder for Game 1 on Monday - NBA Playoffs Preview
When the second round of the playoffs gets on the way, the Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder will look to continue their rivalry. Game 1 is scheduled to take place at the Chesapeake Energy Arena on Monday night and there will be no love lost between the two teams.
This will be the first time these two teams will go head to head with each other since their last controversial meeting on April 22nd in the regular season. Even though the Lakers won that affair 114-106 in double overtime, but the victory was overshadowed by an incident involving Metta World Peace, who intentionally elbowed James Harden in the face.
Metta served a seven match suspension and came back to help his team finally advance into the second round past the Denver Nuggets in 7 games. However World Peace could not stay quiet, after the Game 7 victory and when asked about whether he would offer an apologetic hand shake to Harden, he completely bounced that idea off and said that he does not shake hands with ‘bench’ players.
This may have stirred up the rivalry even more and although the OKC players have downplayed the issue by claiming to have moved on, but it is not going to be a friendly environment when the Lakers visit the Thunder.
"What can I say? The focus is going out there and doing whatever it takes to win," Harden said "I'm not worried about him or what he has to say."
Thunder Coach, Scott Brooks has also come out to lay emphasis on the fact that his team are going to be ready to play and not focus on what happened during the regular season.
"That's the only thing that we care about: It's the first to four who wins the series," Brooks said. "The subplots, that's part of NBA basketball. You don't worry about that. If you focus on that, your attention, your focus is not where it needs to be”
The other important factor in the game will be when the Lakers face off against their old player, Derek Fisher, who will on the Thunder side. Fisher, after being traded to Houston Rockets from Los Angeles, opted to buy out his contract and join the OKC roster, bringing with him the much requires experience to his young Thunder side.
Momentum may be the key factor in this matchup as both these teams have taken completely opposite tracks to get to the second round. OKC blew past the reigning NBA Champions, Dallas Mavericks in 4 games and have had a fair amount of time to rest, practice and they must have addressed some flaws they might think can work against them.
On the other hand, Lakers have had to battle for seven games against the Nuggets. They were leading the series 3-1 and had the opportunity to close out the series, but it took them way too long to wrap it out.
Other than the World-Peace and Harden matchup, there will be a lot of other interesting matchups in this series. Kobe Bryant, despite his age and his everlasting battle with injuries, has been able to lead his team with 29.1 points and 5 assists per game in the post season. From the Thunder, three time scoring champion, Kevin Durant has been their leading man with 26.5 points in this year’s playoffs so far.
Another interesting matchup to see in this series would be how the duo of Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins will look to face off against the duo of Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol. Even though Perkins has been able to put some practice in, but his availability to play in the series opener is still a game time decision.
The last time these two teams played against each other in the playoffs was back in 2010, when the Lakers won and went onto lift the title. A lot has however happened since then, and this OKC team have improved a lot. So when Game 1 tips off, it will begin of the best matchups in this year’s playoffs.
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