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Lakers to play at San Antonio on Wednesday

By Ben Bolch
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Looking ahead

LAKERS AT SAN ANTONIO: Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. PDT. TV: Channel 9, NBA League Pass.

This is the first of three games in 10 days between the Western Conference powers, a sort of miniseries prelude to the playoffs.

The Lakers may have to win all three games to overtake the surging Spurs for the No. 2 spot in the conference, though Kobe Bryant was almost defiant when asked if his team was locked into the No. 3 seeding. “Yeah, we have no shot at getting the second one,” he said flatly.

This will be Mike Brown’s first game against former mentor Gregg Popovich since becoming Lakers coach.

Count the fact that the first meeting of the season between these longtime rivals comes in mid-April as another one of the quirks of the lockout-shortened season. But in a matter of days they should be quite familiar with one another.

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Ben Bolch

Ben Bolch has been a Los Angeles Times staff writer since 1999. He is serving his second stint as the UCLA beat writer, which seems fitting since he has covered almost every sports beat except hockey and horse racing. Bolch is also the author of the recently released book “100 Things UCLA Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die.” He previously covered UCLA basketball from 2010-11 before going on to cover the NBA and the Clippers for five years. He happily traded in gobs of hotel points and airline miles to return to cover UCLA basketball and football in the summer of 2016. Bolch was once selected by NBA TV’s “The Starters” as the “Worst of the Week” after questioning their celebrity journalism-style questions at an NBA All-Star game and considers it one of his finer moments.

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