The Los Angeles Lakers walked over the Memphis Grizzlies 125-85 in Game 6 of the NBA Western Conference first-round playoffs at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California on Friday, winning the series 4-2 and advancing to the West semifinals.

The Grizzlies lacked one of their best 3-point shooters, Luke Kennard, in Friday's game because of left shoulder soreness, dealing a serious blow to their spacing. Therefore, the team invested more efforts in speeding up and going for fast break so they didn't have to face the Laker's solid half-court defense sustained by Anthony Davis and LeBron James.

The Lakers wanted to drive more transition offense as well. By exploiting the opponents' poor spacing, they closed in with resolve to siege the paint while getting ready to cut the Grizzlies' passes to shooters outside. The purple and gold had fewer steals than the opponents (10-6), but delivered many more blocks (15-2). Davis contributed five by himself. The no-fly zone they established limited the Grizzlies' field goal (FG) rate to 32 percent in the paint.

Meanwhile, the Lakers have James, a historic long-passer, to launch fastbreak like a quarterback. They were more productive (24-14) and more efficient (75 percent-42.9 percent) on this front than the Grizzlies which had to count on Morant to drive forward off the dribble.

Even during the half-court offense, the Lakers did better than the Grizzlies, partly thanks to a superb shooting performance by D'Angelo Russell. He went 12-for-18 from the field, including draining five triples, to drop game-high 31 points. James and Jarred Vanderbilt combined to make five 3-pointers as well. James was very efficient in attacking the interior as well, making six of his seven shots there.

Compared with the Lakers, who saw decent contributions from nearly everyone on Friday night, the Grizzlies basically fell apart at this end of the game. Morant, Desmond Bane and Jaren Jackson Jr found themselves trapped in the forest made up of long arms of the Lakers' defenders when they drove in, but they still had to clenched their teeth and threw their bodies into the paint because the team had no way to crack the defense open from the outside.

Having shot 29-for-96 from the field in Friday's game, the Grizzlies ended their season with the biggest playoff loss in franchise history.

Kings break Warriors' souls at the Chase Center

The Sacramento Kings beat the Golden State Warriors 118-99 in Game 6 of the NBA Western Conference first-round playoffs at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California on Friday, tying the series 3-3, The only Game 7 among all first-round series this season will happen between the two teams at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California, on Sunday.

De'Aaron Fox and Malik Monk again combined to make the most significant contributions to the season-saving victory for the Kings as the two scored 54 points collectively. Fox also delivered 11 assists while Monk went to the free throw line 10 times and made nine shots there. With their efforts, the explosive back-court pair made up for the team's losses in playmaking and aggressiveness resulted by Domantas Sabonis' foul trouble.

Having had 28 points off the bench in Friday's game, Monk became the only backup player of all 16 teams to get 20+points in three games in the first-round playoffs this season. By draining three consecutive triples in less than two minutes in the third quarter, he extended his side's lead to double digits from which the Warriors never came back.

Though there is still one more game to go of this series, the Warriors didn't give people many reasons to believe in them because the whole team were in very poor form at home on Friday night. Defensively, they couldn't stop Fox or Monk at all from charging the rim and making an FG, earning free throws, or, worse, getting a chance for 3-point plays. The Warriors did a disappointing job in protecting the rebound as well. Sabonis played only 23 minutes before he was fouled out, but he grabbed nine of the Kings' 18 offensive rebounds before exiting the competition.

If the word for the Warriors' defense is "spiritless," their offense was nothing but disorderly. They acted so confused as the Kings forced their bodies into the Warriors to deflect their ball movement and dribbles. As a result, the Warriors committed 19 turnovers, took and missed a lot of tough shots and even failed to convert many layups.

Stephen Curry went as poorly as 1-for-5 under the hoop. Klay Thompson missed seven of his nine attempts from deep. Jordan Poole was nearly gone on both ends of the game. The team's bench squad was outscored 28-21 by Monk alone.