I watch/cover a lot of sports, but I don’t often have a strong opinion on how an event will turn out, before the fact.

This is an exception.

The Los Angeles Lakers and Denver Nuggets meet in Game 7 of their first-round NBA playoffs series tomorrow night, and I want to get on record with this — because I feel very strongly about it.

How will it turn out?

Lakers win.

By six points or more.

I don’t often get a sense of how a game will go, especially one on the other side of the world from Abu Dhabi, but this is different. I feel so good about it I’m not even worried about jinxing the Lakers. As if I had those sorts of powers.

I see the Lakers winning for several reasons:

1. Kobe Bryant is not going to go out like this. Not in the first round. Not to a Nuggets team with no superstar.  Not this year.

2. The Lakers will arrive at Staples Center and everything about the place, and the atmosphere of the game, will remind them: “We are the Lakers.” Which is good. Conversely, the Nuggets will get there and remember: “We are the Nuggets.” Which is not good, for them.

3. Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum have been called out by Kobe, and they are on notice, and they will play with far more energy than they showed in Game 6. And, remember, those are three of the best 30 or so players in the NBA.

4. Metta “Ron Artest” World Peace, back from his seven-game suspension, will bring toughness and enthusiasm to the game. I hope he doesn’t try to score from the perimeter, because the rust will show, there. But if he plays defense like he can, that will be a huge help.

5. The city, the league, the country, the planet want the Lakers to advance. They are the glamor team, the interesting team. They have Kobe. The Nuggets moving ahead … is dull. Deadly dull. Zero name recognition. And I believe this will effect the officiating of the game. The referees won’t think they are calling it different, but they will. Look for the Lakers to shoot 10 more free throws than Denver does.

6. Kobe is not meant to go out like this. Not here and not now.  (Did I mention this already?) Denver is a competent team but not a good one. They are not going to win an NBA title if they somehow advance (as Dallas did a year ago, when sweeping the Lakers). They know that, too, and in the corners of their minds they already are thinking, “We did well to take this to seven games.”

But Kobe. It’s back to him. Losing in this round is not part of the narrative of his career. He is not going out before playing one of the league’s elite teams. From 2008 forward, he and the Lakers have either won the NBA title (2009, 2010) or lost to the eventual champion (Boston 2008, Dallas 2011).

Denver will not end their season.

Now, I can envision the Lakers losing by 20 to Oklahoma City in the first game of the next series, and that will be a tough one for them to win.

But the Nuggets, in Staples, one-or-done game … they win it. Tight, competitive, but it won’t come down to a last shot.

Oh, and a second prediction, thrown in for free:

Clippers lose by 15 in Memphis on Sunday. That team is done. Their only chance was to win Game 6 at home, and they didn’t do it, and Chris Paul and Blake Griffin are done — and so are they.