SAN FRANCISCO —
Nearly a year ago, Golden State coach Steve Kerr sat in a back room in Los Angeles before playing the Lakers and called the playoff race a “a sprint to the finish.”
The possibility of avoiding the play-in tournament and the fear of slipping entirely out of the top 10 existed for Kerr’s Warriors and the Lakers then just like it does for his team and the Lakers now, the two meeting for the first game out of the All-Star break in consecutive years.
Things don’t feel quite as frantic as a they did a year ago — the Lakers are not five games under .