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GAME DAY PREVIEW Game time: 10:30pm ET Sacramento at LA Lakers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Regular-season records
LOS ANGELES (Ticker) -- The heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers look to continue their march toward the NBA title tonight when they host the Sacramento Kings in Game 2 of their first-round series. Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Glen Rice gave the star-studded crowd at the Staples Center the show they came for, combining to overwhelm the Kings 117-107 in the opener of the series on Sunday. O'Neal, the league's leading scorer during the regular season and a lock for NBA Most Valuable Player honors, tied a playoff career high with 46 points, grabbed 17 rebounds and blocked five shots.
"This is the playoffs and we don't want to get behind," Rice said. "You could end up losing and we don't want to do that. We don't want to end our season early. We want to go all the way until the end and try to bring the ring back to LA." Chris Webber scored 20 of his playoff career-high 28 points in the first half, boiling over in frustration after receiving his fifth foul late in the third quarter. He was slapped with a technical and sat on the bench for most of the final period, fouling out with just under seven minutes to play as the Kings lost their seventh straight playoff series opener dating to 1981. The Kings have not trailed 2-0 in a playoff series since 1986 when they were swept in the first round by the Houston Rockets. The franchise has never won a series when behind by such a deficit. The series moves to Sacramento on Sunday.
| ALSO SEE NBA Scoreboard Sacramento Clubhouse LA Lakers Clubhouse PREVIEWS Milwaukee @ Indiana
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