Sports
The Lakers and Clippers are ready to share their home for the final time
Ten seasons ago, the Clippers opened their preseason by visiting four of their Western Conference rivals. They went to Portland, Utah, Sacramento and finally to Phoenix before they opened the doors to their home arena.
Fans had a lot of reasons to be excited — the team hired Doc Rivers in the offseason to coach and was about to enter the season as bonafide contenders. The season, Rivers felt, was about to be theirs. And, their arena should reflect that.
So, the Clippers covered the banners at Staples Center celebrating the Lakers’ championships and the retired numbers of their all-time greats, and instead featured images of Chris Paul, Blake Griffin and the rest of that Clippers’ core.
“I didn’t look at it as a banner thing,” Rivers said before the preseason home opener. “I look at it as putting our guys up. … It’s our arena when we play. I thought it would be good that we saw our guys. No disrespect to them, but when we play, it’s the Clipper arena as far as I know.”
But it was absolutely a banner thing — the Clippers finally saying “Enough” to one of the NBA’s strangest real-estate partnerships with two franchises sharing an arena.
“He took a lot of heat, but it makes sense,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said Tuesday. “We understand what the Lakers mean to the city and what they’ve done, but for us to have a place that we can call home and be comfortable, I think that was the right thing to do.”
Chuck the Condor waves a banner midcourt during pregame festivities for a Clippers-Trail Blazers game at Staples Center in 2021.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Rivers and the Clippers’ decision in 2013 is just one chapter in this co-habitation story. Provided the teams don’t meet in the playoffs this spring, Wednesday will be the final chapter.
The Clippers will host the Lakers — the final time the Lakers will be the visitors inside the building where they play their home games with the Clippers set to move into the new Intuit Dome in Inglewood next season. The Lakers (31-28, ninth in the West) have won two of the three games this season. The Clippers (37-19, fourth in the West) will be without All-Star forward Paul George, who will sit out his second consecutive game because of a sore left knee.
“Yeah, it’s weird. That’s the word,” Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell said about road games at Crypto.com Arena. “…You go home and your place is redecorated. It just looks different.”
The two teams have played 97 times since the arena’s opening in 1999, the Clippers holding the series advantage, 50-47. One of those regular-season wins for the Lakers actually came in Orlando, Fla., in 2020, making the Clippers 50-46 in Staples Center/Crypto.com Arena ahead of Wednesday’s finale.
As far as anyone can tell, no NBA teams have ever had this kind of shared existence. As Clippers wing Norman Powell pointed out, teams all over the league, such as the Raptors, share their spaces with NHL teams. But the switch from hockey to basketball is different from the switch from one NBA team to another.
A partial to-do list for swapping between Lakers and Clippers games is as follows: change the wrapping on pillars inside the main concourse and outside the building; change the court; swap out the baskets; configure the different courtside seats and scorer’s table; update the merchandise stands; swap the TV trucks and stationary cameras; and redecorate the tunnel to the court for the home team.
The Clippers’ court is 10 feet longer and two feet wider than the Lakers’ court and has 34 more wood panels.
The end result has led to the arena successfully housing two teams without much friction.
“They had to make it home. It makes sense. They want to make it as ‘home’ as possible,” Lakers star LeBron James said. “And it feels like a road game. Their lighting is different, the court is different, the seats look different — all that type of stuff. It feels like a road game — but you just don’t have to travel. Feels like you’re driving to a road game.”
There are other subtle changes for players when the teams play each other. The parking lot underneath the arena is twice as full during Lakers-Clippers games.
“It takes like twice as long to get your car,” Austin Reaves joked. “I mean, his car (pointing at James) might get to stay down there. They probably move mine upstairs.”
Pregame routines change. The home team has access to the weight room, the “visitors” have to use a temporary weight room in a storage area. Court access times are different, particularly for players like James who arrive very early to prepare.
Russell noted one of the strangest quirks: When the Lakers are the visiting team at Crypto.com Arena, they don’t get to use the tunnel to the court that’s steps from the locker room. Instead, they have to use the visitor’s tunnel, which means they run on and off the court past the Clippers locker room, both hockey locker rooms and the normal visiting NBA locker room.
“Walking out through the tunnel is probably the weirdest thing” he said, “we’ve got to go all the way [around].”
It might only be a few hundred extra steps, but it’s different enough to make the night feel a little off.
“I mean it is definitely a different feel,” Powell said. “I think both organizations do a good job of putting their own touch on the arena when it’s a home game and it’s us playing against each other. When it’s a Laker game, it’s a little more dark and intimate with how they black out the stands and like the focus, you can see all the lights are on the court. And the Clippers have a more inclusive environment where everybody’s just trying to get everybody involved and into the game and to have different things going on.
“It’s definitely a different feel when you walk in and, like, the setups that the Lakers have for their team and what we do.”
The lighting is the biggest difference, which strangely enough began as a major similarity. Until the 2006-07 season, the teams used the same lighting inside Staples Center until the Lakers adopted the theater lighting they still use, where the focus is on the court and the few first rows of seats. In 2014, the Clippers began using a brighter LED lighting.
A view of the Intuit Dome, showing a basket stanchion and grandstands, while under construction in January. The Clippers will open the 2024-25 season there.
(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
“It feels different, for sure, when it’s a home game for them. It doesn’t feel like Staples or Crypto,” James said.
Assuming the Lakers and the Clippers don’t meet in the playoffs, all of the awkwardness soon will be obsolete, each team having their own home court.
You won’t have to trick anyone.
“It’s weird showing up and having to do that. I did it my rookie year, come back and still doing that. It is what it is,” Russell said. “You adjust. And you know what that norm is and you adapt to it.
“Obviously, there’s a change on the way and I think it’s good for Lakers and Clippers players and it’s good for the fans.”
Times staff writer Broderick Turner contributed to this report.
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The face of baseball will not be at Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his start on Friday as the Los Angeles Dodgers said he will also miss the Midsummer Classic with what the team called left knee irritation.
Ohtani, for obvious reasons, has become an All-Star Game fixture. He has earned the honor in each of the past five seasons and made his first start in 2021.
Starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up before the MLB game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 03, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The two-way phenom is on his way to winning his fifth MVP award in his last six seasons as he is hitting .290 with a .939 OPS and pitching to a minuscule 1.79 ERA, the second-lowest in the sport among pitchers with 80-plus innings. His OPS is also the seventh-best mark in the league.
The Dodgers said Ohtani will be the team’s designated hitter up until the break, but he will “have some interventions on his knee to put him in the best position for the second half of the season.”
Ohtani dealt with knee issues earlier in the season.
It is certainly a big hit for the game as the other face of the sport, Aaron Judge, will miss the game due to a fractured rib that has kept him out since late May.
Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers gets ready in the on deck circle against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 01, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images) (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
DODGERS WILL AGAIN VISIT WHITE HOUSE TO CELEBRATE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP, OFFICIAL SAYS
Ohtani hit 99 home runs combined in 2024 and 2025, leading the National League with a 1.025 OPS in that span. Ohtani did not pitch in 2024 after elbow surgery but returned to the bump last year and owned a 2.87 ERA and 11.9 K/9, a figure he also put up in 2022 that led the American League.
The “Japanese Babe Ruth” is the only player in MLB history to have 300-plus plate appearances and 40-plus innings in six separate seasons (Ruth only did it twice and never stole 50 bases), and he has more than excelled at both.
Shohei Ohtani pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on May 13, 2026. (Gary A. Vasquez/Imagn Images)
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Ohtani is not hitting like he has in the past, but certainly the best pitching performance of his career will make up for it. He “only” has 20 homers and 56 RBI this season.
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If Mikel Merino is sleeping, please don’t wake him. If the last week has been a dream, he’d just as soon keep dreaming.
Because on Friday, for the second time in five days, Merino came off the bench for the final five minutes of a World Cup knockout game and scored the winning goal, the latest lifting Spain to a 2-1 victory over Belgium and into next week’s semifinal against France in Arlington, Texas.
“Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what’s happening right now, right?” Merino said in Spanish. “Honestly, it’s crazy.”
How crazy? Merino has played less than 10 minutes in the last two games and has two goals. He’s taken four shots in the World Cup and put two of them in the back of the net, the first in stoppage time to beat Portugal in the Round of 16 and in the 88th minute Friday to beat Belgium in a quarterfinal and extend Spain’s unbeaten to streak to 36 games.
“I don’t really even know what to say. I still can’t quite believe it,” Merino said.
Yet Spain’s final substitution, which brought on Merino in the 86th minute, wasn’t the only one that figured heavily in the result. Fifteen minutes earlier Belgian coach Rudi Garcia sent backup goalkeeper Senne Lammens on for Thibaut Courtois — not by choice, by necessity.
The dropoff in talent wasn’t great — Lammens started 32 times for Manchester United this season — but the difference in experience was. Courtois was playing in his 21st World Cup game, second-most all-time, and he had been brilliant up to then.
But he tweaked a muscle making a save minutes earlier and dropped to the turf just before the second-half hydration break. After being attended to by the team’s trainers, he tried to continue but couldn’t, eventually hobbling to the sideline and collapsing on the bench in tears.
“We didn’t want his injury to get worse. That’s why I subbed him off,” Garcia said.
“It’s part and parcel of high-level sport. You need to be concentrated, 100% focused, and need to be able to perform. I did not want to put players on the pitch who were not 100%.”
The margin between Belgium and Spain, after all, is a small one, even if the teams took completely different routes to the quarterfinal.
Spain, which hadn’t gone past the Round of 16 in a World Cup since 2010 when it won its only title, had gone a record six games and 609 minutes without allowing a World Cup goal, dating to the group stage of the last tournament four years ago.
Spain midfielder Mikel Merino scores off a rebound in front of Belgium goalkeeper Senne Lammens during the second half of Spain’s 2-1 quarterfinal win in the World Cup quarterfinals Friday at SoFi Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
You could binge watch two seasons of “Abbott Elementary” in that time.
But if Spain, the reigning European champion, and goalkeeper Unai Simón were the immovable objects, Belgium, playing in the quarterfinals for the third time in four World Cups, was an unstoppable force. With 12 goals in the last three games, it entered the quarterfinals with the third-most goals in the tournament. And no team had taken more shots.
Spain struck first, with Fabián Ruiz giving La Roja a 1-0 lead with his first goal of the tournament in the 30th minute. The sequence started with Pedro Porro sending a cross into the box for Dani Olmo, whose shot was parried away by Courtois. But Ruiz pounced on the rebound and deflected a shot off defender Timothy Castagne and into the back of the net.
In any other game of this tournament, that would have been enough for Simón. But not against Belgium, which ended Spain’s shutout streak in the 41st minute on a brilliant header from Charles De Keterlaere, who shielded Pau Cubarsí with his body and one-hopped a Castagne cross past a flat-footed Simón for his third goal in two games.
“The record and the milestones are there,” Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente said of his goalkeeper’s record streak. “It’s been decades since the last record was set. And perhaps somebody will break the clean-sheet record.
“But it’s going to be many, many years before that happens.”
Belgium opened the game up a bit when Garcia brought Romelu Lukaku, the country’s all-time leading scorer, on at the hour mark. But Courtois was called to make two saves in the next three minutes and came up lame after the second.
Shorty after he came off, De la Fuente summoned Merino over.
“He didn’t say much to me,” Merino said. “He told me I was coming in as the No. 10. And then, as the game was coming to an end, he told me I was incredible.
“Those are the only two things he said to me.”
The first shot Lammens faced came moments later, when Cubarsí put a one-hop shot on goal from distance. The keeper dove to his right to stop it with both hands, but the ball skipped just before it reached he and Lammens had trouble with the rebound, pushing it toward the edge of the six-yard box for Merino, who tapped it in.
“Unfortunately, to beat a team of this caliber, you need luck on your side,” Garcia, the Belgian coach, said. And the stars didn’t align for us.”
So while Belgium goes home, Spain goes to Texas for Tuesday’s semifinal with France, the only team in the world ranked ahead of it.
“Ever since the World Cup started, everyone has been waiting for this match,” Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal said. “I’ve been really looking forward to it. To me, they’re the two best teams in the World Cup.
“If anyone can take on France with confidence, it’s us.”
Especially if Merino keeps dreaming.
Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero contributed to this story.
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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