SAN FRANCISCO — Steve Kerr loves to tell anyone who will listen that every day in the NBA is Wednesday.

It’s an 82-game grind designed to numb you into submission. Most nights in late October are sleepwalk specials where veterans punch the clock and collect their checks.

Friday night at Chase Center was definitely not Wednesday.

The Warriors climbed out of an absurd 25-point early second-quarter ditch to crush the Lakers 112-95. That’s the largest margin of victory for any team trailing by 25 or more in the last 30 years — a reverse blowout.

More importantly, it injected serious electricity into a rivalry that had spent a decade feeling plastic.

Warriors-Lakers should always be a capital-T Thing, but, frankly, it‘s only been a proxy battle for Bay Area elder millennials after Golden State abdicated their entire childhoods to Southern California glamour and titles. (Most came home.)

And for the past decade, Warriors-Lakers wasn’t a rivalry between franchises. It was just the Warriors versus LeBron James.

Yes, the “King” was the sun around which everything orbited. The teams were mere stage dressing for another showdown between James and Steph Curry — a well-established battle that spanned a decade and three time zones and, frankly, had lost most of its allure as it played on smaller conceptual stages.

Now LeBron isn’t dominating the marquee, the weight-class feels appropriate for these two teams, and the rivalry has real teeth. It feels authentic, gritty and — this is vital — nasty.

Credit goes to Yaxel Lendeborg.

If you just looked at the box score, you’d assume Lendeborg was an unmitigated disaster Friday, and, well, he was. He picked up six fouls in 24 minutes, coughed up five turnovers, finished minus-20, and openly admitted postgame that he “wet the bed.”

He poked the bear in Luka Dončić. And in the first quarter, the bear mauled him.

Dončić came out looking like a monster, hanging 21 of his 37 points in the first quarter Friday, including five 3-pointers and five assists in those opening dozen. Luka decided right away that school was in session for the rookie.

Partitions, cover your eyes: It was some good stuff.

Yet in a twisted way, Lendeborg gave this entire game its pulse.

Outside the arena, bookies — sorry, prediction markets — plastered digital billboard trucks with Luka-Yaxel memes. Inside the bowl, the crowd wasn’t the usual wine-and-cheese corporate gallery complaining about the NASDAQ (though, to be fair…) — they were loud, earnest, and completely engaged.

And when Lendeborg got chewed up and spit out early, the Warriors didn’t shrug their shoulders. Just another Wednesday. They turned into a pack of bear hunters backing up their kid brother.

They locked in on both sides of the court. After turning the ball over 10 times in the first frame, Golden State committed just five giveaways the rest of the night.

Draymond Green played like a an offensive maestro with two left hands (he’s only shot 16 times all season), putting up nine assists against one turnover and anchoring the offense and defense. Stephen Curry did his vintage superhero routine, raining eight triples on his way to 31 points and leaving Dončić on the ground on a nasty third-quarter crossover.

Brandin Podziemski took over the bridge between the third and fourth quarters, putting up 21 points total and stopping many more though pure chaos.

Then there was the coaching chess match.

JJ Redick wants everyone to know he’s a basketball savant. But when Kerr threw out a compact 2-3 zone alongside half-court traps, Redick’s offense looked totally paralyzed.

The Lakers had no counters. After five assists in the first quarter, Dončić had zero the rest of the game.

Golden State walled off the paint with bodies, ignored non-shooters, and baited Los Angeles into an ugly 5-on-1 isolation slog. That didn’t work for LA.

And nothing else did, either. The Lakers’ bench was outscored 50-7.

It was tactical domination from the sneaky king of adjustments, Kerr.

Lendeborg needed some humbling on Friday, yes, but he gave this team an edge. He took the regular-season apathy and tossed it into the bay.

Sports is infinitely better when Northern California and Southern California despise each other. The NBA is markedly better.

So when the Lakers return to Chase Center on Jan. 21, don’t expect a quiet winter evening. Expect the best the NBA and sports can offer.

Warriors-Lakers has juice again. Keep pouring.

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