On Sat Feb 28, the Los Angeles Lakers took on the Golden State Warriors at the Chase Center in San Francisco. The Lakers had lost three straight games entering this Saturday Night Primetime matchup, with the past two being close game losses to the Orlando Magic at home and the Phoenix Suns on the road. With a decline into sixth place in the Western Conference standings, the Purple & Gold needed to break this losing streak so they could prevent a further plunge into the play-in standings in the West. The Warriors continued to be significantly undermanned as Stephen Curry was still out with his knee injury and Kristaps Porzingis was sidelined due to an illness. The Lakers were without Rui Hachimura, who was also sick, for this game on the 27th birthday of Luka Doncic. Hoping for a good win over eighth-place Golden State, the Purple & Gold looked for their second win of the month over their northern California counterparts as they won 105-99 on Feb 7 in Los Angeles.

From the start, the Lakers got off to a blazing start with some great three-point shooting from LeBron James, who had 20 points in the first half. After a solid first quarter, the Purple & Gold surged ahead with a massive lead that was built up to 20+ points. Austin Reaves scored 13 in the first half while Luka scored 10. But in the third quarter, Doncic made a few three-pointers and took over the game. Along with good bench contributions from Luke Kennard(16 points) and Jake LaRavia(15 points), the Lakers built up their lead to be insurmountable and ended up packing in a good win over the Warriors by the final score of 129-101. Doncic scored 26 points, grabbed six rebounds and dished out eight assists for a solid birthday performance. LeBron scored 22 points with seven rebounds and nine dimes, while Austin Reaves scored 18 points to have the Big 3 combine for a total of 66 points. With only four guys in double-figures, Golden State was not equipped for this game as they fell to a record of 31-29 for the season.

The Purple & Gold will open up their month of March after a record of 6-6 in February against the Sacramento Kings on Sun Mar 1. Their schedule will feature some winnable games over a couple of other bad teams such as the New Orleans Pelicans, Indiana Pacers, and Washington Wizards. But there will be plenty of tough games and opportunistic duels against playoff-caliber teams like the Denver Nuggets(twice), Minnesota Timberwolves, Houston Rockets(twice) and New York Knicks coming up in the next few weeks. With the three Western Conference teams listed being well within range, the Lakers have a chance to potentially surge up the standings to improve their playoff seed and avoid the Play-In Tournament altogether. With a month and a half left of games to play in the regular season, the Purple & Gold seek to build themselves up for another playoff run. Time will tell how good this team as currently constructed really is.