The Nets' game against the Lakers was the focus of the season, and the first meeting between the two sides of the season was also arranged in the Christmas war, in which hardened the Nets finally narrowly defeated the Lakers on the road. The Nets are still Harden's single-core team in this game, but their opponents, the Lakers, will usher in the return of Davis, the core of the interior, in this game. All in all, this game is still full of highlights.
In the first quarter of the game, the two sides played hard in the first half, and in the second half, the Lakers exploded a wave of 17:5 to open up the point difference. In the second quarter of the game, the Lakers' offensive attack did not decrease, and the Nets were still chasing, and the two sides always maintained a gap of about 10 points. Although the Nets were close to the point difference in the middle of the third quarter, the Lakers played another wave of 21:9 in the final period, re-opening the score to double digits. In the final quarter, the Lakers did not leave the Nets much chance, and under the leadership of James and Westbrook, they finally defeated the opponent 106:96 to successfully avenge.
In fact, both teams have performed very badly in recent games, with the Lakers, who won this game, just losing to the Heat in the last game. The reason why they were able to finally sweep the decline in this game and win the game was partly because the Nets were missing two giants, and their last few games were in really bad shape. On the other hand, the Lakers ushered in Davis's comeback and the momentum is gaining momentum. And in this game, their defense is fully targeted, making the Nets' offense very uncomfortable, which is the key to the Lakers' victory.
This game is of great significance to the Lakers' journey this season, after all, their big three combination, the "360 combination", has once again ushered in the opportunity to play together after a month. In this game, James, who has reached the age of 37, once again played an extremely outstanding performance, this game he shot 14 of 21, including 8 three-pointers, 2 of 8 three-pointers to cut the team's high 33 points, in addition to 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks of the full data record.
This game is james' 18th consecutive game of the season to score more than 25 points, and it is very rare to be able to play at the age of 37. In the first three quarters of this game, whether it is an inside strong break or an outside mid-range shooting, James was able to complete the easy scoring, and in the third quarter of the game has scored 27 points. In the fourth quarter of the game, when the Lakers were in a scoring drought, James completed two consecutive steals and two consecutive violent dunks to help the team re-open the point difference and finally win the game.
The biggest focus of this game is undoubtedly Davis, who has returned after missing a month of games, and although he has missed many games, he still showed very good form. At the beginning of this game, he and James completed a wonderful empty line, and after receiving James's pass, he completed a super difficult dunk and announced his return. In the following round, Davis hit another mid-range jumper against the defender and scored four consecutive points in the opening round, which was very good.
Davis was severely restrained by the team in this game, and finally played only 24 minutes, with 8 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 blocks on 3-of-8 shooting. Although he didn't perform very well in the data in the end, his return brought a great help to the Lakers. On the one hand, Davis's blocking and dismantling cooperation with James, Wei Shao and others is still powerful, bringing a lot of choices to the team on the offensive end, and this also makes the Lakers' internal line have an extremely threatening point. On the other hand, his return has also brought great changes to the Lakers' weak defense, the Lakers' defense has become extremely good, and Davis's 4 blocks in the whole game also means that the Lakers' internal line has a good barrier.
In addition, Davis' return to the court means that the Lakers have another core in addition to James and Westbrook when making lineup rotations, which can greatly reduce James's burden. In short, whether on the offensive end or on the defensive end, the strength of the Lakers after Davis' return will be greatly improved. Of course, in this game Davis was subject to strict restrictions and was not in 100% form. I believe that in the next game he will continue to play more and more, and he will play better and better.
Westbrook's performance in this campaign is still decent, shooting 7 of 14 in the 33 minutes of playing time, including 2 of 2 three-pointers and 0 of 15 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists. Although Westbrook has been very careful about his mistake count in recent games, there have been as many as 5 turnovers in the whole game. However, at least Westbrook has a fairly good control over the number of shots in this campaign, and it can be seen that he is still very hard trying to help the team win the game through his own changes, which is very good news for the Lakers.
In the month of Davis' absence, the Lakers were obviously extremely uncomfortable, and although James played crazy in this month, scoring 30+ points in 14 games, the Lakers only achieved a poor record of 7 wins and 10 losses in the 17 games that Davis was absent, which also made the team ranking currently fall to the edge of the Western Conference playoff team. Among them, a large part of the reason why the Lakers' record during this period is so bad is that when James came off the court, the Lakers led by Wei Shao alone were very struggling.
At present, after Davis ushers in a comeback, the Lakers' problem will be well solved, and when James is off the bench, Davis is fully able to take on the responsibility of leading the team on the field, which will win more rest time for James. In addition, Davis's return can also greatly improve the Lakers' very weak interior defense. In short, judging from the situation of this game, the Lakers are gradually on the right track.