Good question, one that a younger friend posed to me: "how deep is my LAL hatred, given that Denver may be a tougher matchup"
I made a simple "additive linear utility", where I assigned 2 utilities to each of the four teams: one for losing and one for winning a series.
So 100 utils if Celts win, 1 i they lose.
LAL 4 if they win, 40 if they loose.
Etc
Then for all 8 possible scenarios, assign a probability of who wins the championship (given who gets to the championship).
Then compute weighted sum of these utilities for all Lakers Win scenarios, compared to utilities for LAL lose scenarios.
Bottom line: with reasonable measures of Laker hatred, Denver sortOfLike, and Miami disdain --- it is almost always better for LAL to loose.
That is: it takes ridiculous probabilities (say, 90% chance Denver beats Celts, and 90% celts beat laker) for the weighting to favor LAL winning.
Obviously its a simple model, but it isn't totally silly
(I could post the XLS, which is easy to tweak. Should I?\
BTW: apologies Ale ... somehow misread the "best"