Lakers News: Los Angeles Breaks Through For First Win Of Season! Against A Good Team!
Well it finally happened, folks.
Your Los Angeles Lakers nabbed their first victory of the 2022-23 regular season! Against one of the best in the West! Not only that, but $47.1 million sixth man Russell Westbrook turned in his best performance of the year, looking practically joyful for the first time all season while directing the flow of the second unit's offense.
Obviously, L.A.'s 121-110 home victory on Sunday night against the visiting Denver Nuggets arrives with a few caveats. Most importantly, they were the final team to secure a win this season, and there are 76 more contests to go. A win is a win, especially one this definitive, but let's see Los Angeles string together a few more of these before deciding the crisis has been averted.
With the W, the 1-5 Lakers move up to the... No. 14 seed in the West, ahead of the 1-6 Houston Rockets by percentage points. But still, this was a big step in the right direction!
Lakers head coach Darvin Ham brought out his fourth starting lineup in six regular season games. Ham started Patrick Beverley and Lonnie Walker IV in his backcourt once again, kept Troy Brown Jr. in at small forward, and let LeBron James and Anthony Davis fill out the frontcourt.
Los Angeles kept things close in the first quarter, before ultimately heading into the half with a marginal lead, 55-51.
James singlehandedly scored 10 of L.A.'s first 12 points to kick off the third quarter. His teammates got into the fun, mostly with some effective jump shooting. Traditional sharpshooters like Beverley and Matt Ryan, plus Austin Reaves (who has been just one of L.A.'s two above-average three-point shooters so far this year) all connected from deep, as did... Russell Westbrook. The Lakers shot 4-of-8 from long range in the quarter overall, and 14-of-24 from the field.
Unlike several other fourth quarters of recent vintage, Los Angeles did not fall apart with the game on the line late. Davis, James, and Westbrook scored 19 of the Lakers' 28 points in the frame. James went 1-of-2 from deep in the period:
Troy Brown Jr. and Lonnie Walker IV have proven to be incredibly valuable for L.A., as two high-energy athletes who can actually defend along the perimeter and make the occasional interior shot (both have generally struggled from deep, although Walker had a good night from distance). Patrick Beverley and Austin Reaves contributed plenty of moxie, and Reaves and Matt Ryan continued to emerge as reliable floor spacers.
Kendrick Nunn and Damian Jones were squeezed to the fringes of L.A.'s rotation, with neither playing more than 3:23 in the contest. It appears that Beverley, Westbrook, Walker and Reaves have all superseded Nunn in Ham's backcourt rotation, while the smaller, swifter Wenyen Gabriel seems to have moved ahead of Jones. How these lineups change when Dennis Schröder and Thomas Bryant return from their respective thumb surgeries will be interesting to track.
James, Davis and Westbrook (yes, Westbrook) were the team's standouts. King James scored 26 points on 10-of-22 shooting from the floor (and 2-of-5 from three-point land). He also grabbed eight rebounds and six dimes for good measure. The Brow had a 23-point, 15-rebound double-double, along with two assists, more or less matching the output of his Nuggets counterpart Nikola Jokic, who had 23 points, 14 rebounds and six assists of his own.
Westbrook scored 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting (including 2-of-4 from deep), chipped in eight rebounds and eight assists, and was a team-best +18 during his minutes on the floor.
The craziest Russell Westbrook stat though, courtesy of StatMuse, is just how great the 33-year-old has been as a bench piece for the best two games:
This writer did expect that bringing Westbrook off the bench would be the most effective way to utilize his skills as a playmaker on the ball and a rebounder, but certainly did not predict such a night-and-day different in both output and demeanor so quickly. But I like it!
Westbrook may not have the same explosive burst that made him one of the league's most unstoppable fast break forces during his Oklahoma City Thunder stint, but he can still make a crafty move or two in the paint:
In an insane twist, the Lakers actually outshot the Nuggets from beyond the arc, making 13-of-30 (43.3%) of their treys. It was nice to see the team's offense finally catch up to its promising defense, at least for a night. All told, L.A.'s Crypto.com Arena fans finally had something to cheer about on Sunday. The team will get an extended break ahead of its next contest, a home game against the New Orleans Pelicans Wednesday.
How did we do on our gambling projections?
We nailed them all, thank you very much. We predicted the Lakers would cover the -3 spread against Denver, and not only did they do that, they also won. We figured Nikola Jokic would score below his anticipated 25.5 point over/under, the All-Star big man had "only" 23 points. We expected guard Lonnie Walker IV to get out of his shooting slump and nail more than 1.5 triples, he went 3-for-5.
