LOS ANGELES — The Lakers‘ 121-107 win against an unmanned one phoenix sun group on Friday night is not the type of group effort that usually impress LeBron James too much. With Kevin Durant, Booker Devin, Chris Paul And Deandre Ayton everyone rested, in the end LA was still ahead of the Suns at halftime.
The win, however, pushed the Lakers’ record to 42-39, ensuring that they will end the regular season on a winning streak no matter what happens in last Sunday’s finals. Utah Jazz.
That, after the way LA stumbled in October, is an astonishing one.
“Oh and five,” James said, recalling the Lakers’ start.
“Two and five,” he said, recalling a brief win to stop the bleeding.
“Two and 10,” he added, accounting for his second five-game losing streak in the Lakers’ first 12 games this year. “Yeah, 2-10.”
Victory over Phoenix makes the Lakers the sixth team in NBA history to start the season 2-10 or worse and finish on a all-win record, joining Chicago bulls (twice in 2004-05 and 1976-77), the New Jersey Nets (twice in ’04-05 and 1981-82) and the Seattle SuperSonics (1977-78), according to the Information & Statistics study. ESPN’s statistics.
“I just told AD [Anthony Davis], I said, ‘Dude, can you believe we’re going to finish this season above 0.500? After everything that happened this season?'” James said, “We turned the tide. And it’s the regular season, obviously a lot of basketball will be played. But to know that we will finish a few games above 0.500? It’s pretty cool.”
Davis said that he and James’ forced share in their appreciation for some of their new teammates acquired on the trade deadline prompted the surge after LA’s All-Star break, the team has The team is on the verge of a knockout or at least, a play-in tournament.
“We pointed to some people and said, ‘We thank you all. Looks like we’re not going that way to start the season,'” Davis said. “Gosh, we just kept pushing and kept honing. And it’s clear that the people who were able to come here helped us get some more wins and eventually finish above .500.”
James (16 points) and Davis (14 points, 21 rebounds) combined to shoot just 10 to 31 against the Suns, but the other three Lakers topped the plateau by 20 points in D’Angelo Russell (24 points when shooting 9 to 14), Austin Reaves (22 points for shooting 9 to 13) and Malik Beasley (21 points when shooting 7 eats 14) to control the game.
LA is 7th in the West after Friday night, but the 5-9 seeds are still a possibility depending on how the Lakers and other teams around them in the crowded Western standings play out at the end of the day. week.
The Lakers have bigger plans as they look ahead, but on Friday night there was a sense of collective satisfaction in looking back for a moment at how far they’ve come.
“I’m glad we were able to fight through that adversity and try to find the right pieces and we were able to pull through,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “Our work hasn’t been done for a long time, so it would be nice to think back to it at some point, but hopefully I’ll think about this in the first year after we’ve advanced.” trophy or something. …In the short form, it’s very proud. And in the long form, we have a lot of work to do.”
