First Playoff Game Friday at Forum

The NBA announced that the Lakers, who will play either the Portland Trail Blazers or Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round, will open the playoffs at the Great Western Forum next Friday and Sunday.

Tipoff times will be announced within the next couple of days, but it’s certain they will be Friday night and sometime Sunday afternoon. The remainder of the league’s first-round schedule, in a 2-2-1 format, is also not yet finalized.

The Laker schedule is pretty definitive. They end the regular season Sunday against the Utah Jazz, a 12:30 start, and then go to Palm Desert for a mini-camp to prepare for the playoffs.

They will be at College of the Desert, site of training camp last October, for single workouts Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then return home. Thursday’s practice will be at Southwest L.A. College, as opposed to starting the playoffs that day and continuing Saturday, a schedule that would have provided one less day of practice.

“I don’t think it will make that much of a difference,” Coach Del Harris said of opening Friday as opposed to Thursday. “I think it’ll be fine. If it was Thursday, that would have been fine too.

“[We will] try to improve, touch on some of the weaker points of our offense, our defense. Just get better. Really trite and simple.”

He paused.

“And not get hurt.”

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Cedric Ceballos--an all-star with the Lakers, a role player with the Suns--is an injured player with the Mavericks.

Sent from Phoenix to Dallas on Feb. 18, he underwent surgery about a month later to repair a bone bruise and a slight cartilage tear in the right knee that cost him the rest of the season. What would have been his first game at the Great Western Forum as a Maverick instead became his 17th consecutive miss.