Nine days ago in Los Angeles, Walker Kessler went 12-for-12 in his debut. The only cleaner perfect night in Lakers history belongs to Wilt Chamberlain, who went 14-for-14 back in March 1969. Tonight the Lakers bring that problem to Chase Center, along with the two guards who keep feeding him, and the Warriors get a second crack at the team that ran them out of the building 127-105 on opening night.
Los Angeles Lakers at Golden State Warriors When: Friday, October 30, 2026 | 7:00 PM PT Where: Chase
Center, San Francisco TV: Prime Video Radio: 95.7 The Game Stakes: NBA Cup group play opener (West Group C)
Everything starts with Luka, so we’ll start there too. Through four games he’s averaging 36.0 points, 8.3 assists and a league-leading 5.3 made threes a night. He does all of it at the pace of a man strolling through his own living room while five defenders sprint around him. He sat out Wednesday with back tightness on the second night of a back-to-back, and he’s off the injury report tonight. For the Warriors, this is a chance for Yaxel Lendeborg and Co. to get their revenge on the phenom.
Then there’s Austin Reaves, who the Lakers paid $185 million to stick around. He has spent five games proving the check cleared for good reason. He’s putting up 24.4 points and 5.4 assists a night, and he dropped 23 on the Warriors in the opener while everyone was busy watching Luka bicker with a rookie. Together Reaves and Doncic have pushed the Lakers to 123.2 points per game, second in the league, on 39.2% from three.
But let’s get back to the big man Kessler. The Lakers have never been shy about going out and getting the biggest man on the market. They traded for Wilt in 1968 and Kareem in 1975. They handed Shaq a free-agent deal in 1996, pried Pau Gasol out of Memphis in 2008, rolled the dice on Dwight Howard in 2012 and pushed every chip to the middle for Anthony Davis in 2019.
Kessler is the newest name on that wall. Luka reportedly told the front office he wanted an “A-list center,” and the Lakers paid like they believed him. They sent Utah two unprotected first-rounders and two pick swaps, then handed Kessler a four-year, $130 million deal.
What I keep coming back to is the recipe. Wilt had Jerry West, Kareem had Magic, and Shaq and Pau had Kobe. The best versions of the Lakers have almost always come down to an elite guard who knew exactly where to put the ball and a giant who knew what to do with it. Kessler hasn’t earned a seat at that table, but he’s inheriting the assignment and he’s doing it with two of those guards at the same time. He’s averaging 14.8 points on 75% shooting with 8.2 rebounds and 2.4 blocks. He’s available tonight despite playing through a splint on his finger.
The Warriors’ best answer so far has been the rookie with the loudest mouth in the building. Yaxel Lendeborg said he “lost all respect” for Luka after the opener, and he had the receipts to talk. He held Doncic to 1-of-6 shooting as the primary defender, and the lone make was a half-court banker at the halftime buzzer.
Since then he’s put up 31 and 12 against Denver and 26 more in Minnesota, where Steph dropped 44 points on a perfect 16-of-16 from the line to give the Warriors two straight wins. Five games into his career, Golden State is asking him to chase the league’s leading scorer on one end and carry the second-biggest scoring load on the roster on the other. Most rookies don’t get handed that kind of double duty until they’ve at least learned where the team bus parks.
The problem is everything around those two. Jimmy Butler, Moses Moody and Kristaps Porzingis are all still out, and Gui Santos is doubtful. That leaves Draymond Green and Al Horford to deal with a 7-foot-2 lob target who hasn’t missed a shot against this team yet.
Luka is going to spend all night looking for Lendeborg out of the corner of his eye. Reaves is going to punish anybody who helps, and Kessler is going to be floating at the rim waiting for the ball to drop out of the sky. The Warriors don’t have the bodies to solve all three, so they have to decide which problem they can live with losing to.
That’s the old argument again. The Lakers have spent generations finding giants for their guards to throw the ball to, and the Warriors have spent the last decade asking their guards to make giants irrelevant. Nine days ago, Kessler made Golden State’s side of that argument look awfully expensive. Tonight the Warriors get another chance to prove they were right.
