Lakers: Double-Doubles From LeBron James, Anthony Davis Help LA Down Spurs
It turns out that having a healthy Anthony Davis on the floor for your team is, well, pretty darn helpful.
The All-Star Lakers center hardly showed any signs of rust following a five-and-a-half week layoff with a right foot stress injury, scoring 21 points on 7-of-16 shooting from the floor and 6-of-7 shooting from the free throw line, while also pulling down 12 rebounds, stuffing four shots, and chipping in a steal and an assist, all in just 26:11.
For tonight at least, Thomas Bryant remained LA's starting center. Playing fewer minutes than AD (21:03), he had a fairly modest night, scoring eight points while shooting 2-of-3 from the field and 4-of-4 from the free throw line, grabbing five rebounds, notching a steal, and rejecting this shot:
At the 4:22 mark of the first quarter, with the Spurs absolutely walloping the Lakers on a 13-1 run, two fateful moments in this erratic Lakers season transpired at once. Anthony Davis returned to the floor for the first time since December 16th, and Rui Hachimura made his Lakers debut. Davis instantly nailed a three:
LA immediately went on a 9-2 run... and then Russell Westbrook, clearly still angry at Zach Collins for a certain Flagrant 2 foul two months ago, hard-fouled Collins by throwing him to the ground, which prompted a 4-0 Spurs stretch to close the quarter up five, 30-25.
Thanks to led by an equal opportunity offense, the younger, longer Spurs actually looked pretty good in the first half, building out multiple 10-point leads in the second quarter until an unnecessarily small closing quarter lineup of James, Davis, Schröder, Beverley and Westbrook closed the quarter's concluding three minutes on a 7-0 run. The Spurs led by just a point, 54-53, at the break.
Bryant and James flexed their two-man game throughout the night in the minutes without Davis, including this nifty defense-into-offense play:
One scary moment transpired at the end of the third quarter, after Davis rolled his right ankle badly by landing on Collins's foot while striving to force up a buzzer-beater from mid-court. A mere Flagrant 1 was assessed on Collins, and Davis nailed all three of his technical foul shots.
No one made or lost any ground through three quarters, with San Antonio up 82-81.
The Lakers' best defender, Davis, reminded the Crypto.com Arena home crowd just how lethal he's looked in the block when healthy this year (Dennis Schröder showed off the new scrambling moxie he's had of late during this sequence, too):
Funnily enough, after the score remained knotted up through the opening minutes of the fourth quarter, the Lakers went on an 11-0 run after Thomas Bryant was subbed back in for Anthony Davis at the 9:22 mark. Three Lakers (James, Schröder, and rookie shooting guard Max Christie) each made a triple during the run, which was subsequently capped off by this James dish to TB for an all-too-easy slam:
San Antonio never got closer than eight points the rest of the way. LA won, 113-104. For the Lakers, Davis and James each finished with double-doubles. James scored 20 points on 8-of-20 shooting from the floor, dished out 11 dimes (against six turnovers), and was one rebound away from a triple-double.
