Dave McMenamin<\/a> reported the Lakers will use their standard court because players had trouble slipping on the alternative bright yellow surface during the group stage. An NBA source told McMenamin the decision was made “out of an abundance of caution.”<\/p>\nLos Angeles is hosting one of two NBA Cup quarterfinals games Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The other one is between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Phoenix Suns, and the two winners will head to Las Vegas for Saturday’s semifinals. The Lakers are attempting to win their second NBA Cup after capturing the title during the 2023-24 campaign, which was the event’s inaugural season.<\/p>\n
The Purple and Gold won’t have to worry about dealing with Victor Wembanyama, as the Spurs star is out with a calf injury.<\/p>\n
He was available when the two teams played last month and finished with 19 points and eight rebounds before fouling out. It was an uncharacteristically poor showing for the big man, and he figured to be a candidate for a bounce-back performance if he was available.<\/p>\n
As for Los Angeles, Luka Don\u010di\u0107 returned for Sunday’s win over the Philadelphia 76ers after missing two games for the birth of his daughter. He was unstoppable the last time out against the Spurs when he posted 35 points, 13 assists, nine rebounds, five steals and two blocks.<\/p>\n
That was with Wembanyama anchoring San Antonio’s interior defense, so don’t be surprised if Don\u010di\u0107 has another impressive performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA Cup is known for its unique courts, but things will look a bit different during Wednesday’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-341848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}