The Warriors will open their title defense season by hosting the Lakers on the first night of the 2022/23 campaign, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link). As Charania notes, Golden State will also give championship rings to those who were with the team last season. The ring ceremony and game are scheduled to be televised by TNT.
The Warriors are coming off their fourth title victory in the past eight seasons. They finished with the third-best record in the Western Conference last season (53-29), trailing only the Grizzlies (56-26) and Suns (64-18). The team lost a handful of players, including Gary Payton II and Otto Porter Jr., in free agency, but still has its core group.
The Lakers had a disappointing campaign last season. The team dealt with several injuries to key players, preventing the star trio of Russell Westbrook, LeBron James and Anthony Davis – along with the supporting group – from developing chemistry. At 33-49, they finished 11th in the West.
The full NBA schedule is expected to be released in the near future. The only other schedule-related news also involves the Lakers, as veteran NBA reporter Marc Stein reported (via Twitter) they’re likely to visit the Mavericks on Christmas Day this year.
So are Payton and Porter gonna be away from there team the first game to go to the ring ceremony?
No
For some reason I always thought they get the rings when they play each other.
Who?
Otto and GP2 get their rings the first time they play GSW at GSW.
if the lakers are healthy theyre still a 5-7 seed out west. the westbrook, AD & bron experiment can still work
No
A chance at being a bubble team. I don’t see them in top 6.
Nope, even with AD+Bron they aren’t finishing higher than 9th, and likely not higher than 12th.
Lebron gets to witness Steph tieing him in ring count. I’m sure he’s aware that Speph could easily pass him next year.
Want to see his face when that happens. Then he’s gotta be thinking. Who has best chance for 5 lol …….
Clippers are.
That’s what I think is Lacob’s plan: get Steph 1-up in rings on Bron, then draft Bronny and swap out Wiggins for Lebron for maximum ticket sales leaguewide.
Lol
Man they’re serving Lebron to the wolves first game of the year.
Really rubbing it in his face and getting a preview of his future team (GSW only team in rare position to draft Bronny and have Wiggins leaving so Lebron can replace in $).
Lakers bout get that @ss spanked by 30
Feel so good papi
The NBA champions play a lottery team on opening night?
Hahaha lots of people in “LA”
The biggest question will be does Westbrook start or off the bench?
Westbrook will never accept coming off the bench, never. And truth is he shouldn’t.
He would never sacrifice.
He sacrificed if he did not have any action in June.
Why opt in?
Because a bag filled with 47 million USD is hard to ignore.
It’s wild because had AD been healthy I honestly believe that the lakers would have the championship in 2021 & would have had a chance to win it this year.
Yeah ok. And Santa is real too.
If you honestly believe that, then you have absolutely no clue about basketball. Lebron is old and that team was awful from day 1. GSW started the season 18-2 without Klay, no shot did a full strength Lakers team have any shot at GSW, it would have been the easiest sweep ever.
And the date..?