The NBA regular season continues, with the East and West facing a battle of focus, with the Lakers heading to the road to challenge the Cavaliers.
The Lakers this season can be described as more difficult, not only the thick eyebrow brother has been plagued by injuries for a long time, but also the all-out bet on Wei Shao is also lost in the system, coach Vogel and the management of the fallout, internal contradictions emerge endlessly, resulting in the team from the title favorite, quickly reduced to the playoff marginal team.
On the other hand, the Cavaliers, this season has become the big dark horse in the East, helpless is that the injury problem is too serious, the team's record has declined recently, only 1 win ahead of the 7th Raptors before the game, and the team's record pressure is no less than that of the Lakers.
As soon as the game began, the Lakers showed their determination to win, because after being reversed by the Wizards in the last game, the team had fallen to the tenth place in the West, only 2 wins ahead of the Spurs behind them.
This means that if the Lakers can't seize the opportunity to accumulate wins as soon as possible, the team may not even qualify for the playoffs, especially considering that the Lakers' remaining schedule is extremely difficult, and it is not easy to maintain the top ten.
Therefore, the Lakers played a perfect start of 6-0 as soon as they opened, helplessly in the confrontation with the Cavaliers, the Lakers' feel gradually declined, and at the end of the first quarter, the team fell behind by 7 points.
Seeing that the situation was not good, James began to exert his strength in the second quarter, even if he took out the playoff "full strength" mode in advance, and successively entered the inner line to complete the end, Markkanen and Lefu could not limit James's impact at all, but frequently became the background board.
Coupled with the outside line to find a feel, the Lakers successfully completed the rebound, and at the end of the half, still maintained a 5-point lead.
Easy side to fight again, the Cavaliers playing at home continue to eat into the point difference, the two teams opened a long tug-of-war, three quarters of the war, the Cavaliers at home to surpass one point.
Entering the final quarter of the competition, the Lakers changed their previous slump, played a very smooth offensive performance at the beginning of the quarter, and did their best on the defensive end, which allowed the Lakers to quickly pull the point difference to double digits.
Since then, the Lakers have briefly muted, the situation has fallen into chaos again, the Cavaliers frequently stand on the free throw line, fortunately, the Lakers this time called out a timeout in time, and directly scored two points after returning.
With the Cavaliers making a series of mistakes, James turned around and shot backwards in a row, the game completely lost suspense, and the Lakers who played away won a crucial victory 131-120, with which the Lakers returned to ninth in the West.
Throughout the game, James is naturally the lakers to win the big hero, from the beginning of the game James full of fire, it seems to open the full zhan mode in advance, after all, do not open the full zhan mode, the Lakers may not even be able to enter the playoffs.
After the game, James played 40 minutes, shooting 17-of-29, and efficiently bombed a large triple-double with 38 points, 11 rebounds, 12 assists, 1 steal and 1 block.
Such a performance has made James the oldest player in NBA history to cut 30+ triple-doubles, and also become the sixth player in history to face his old club at least three times to cut triple-doubles, and lead the league scoring list with an average of 30 points per game, promising to become the oldest scoring king in history.
In addition to James' violent departure, the Lakers have 3 other major surprises, of which the Miracle Soldiers handed over a performance of 7 of 7 shots.
First of all, the second boss Wei Shao, he finally began to find the right role positioning, while maintaining high efficiency, he found self-confidence and habitual playing style.
In this game, 7 of 14, he handed over 20 points, 4 rebounds, 11 assists, 1 steal and 1 turnover, +23 plus-minus is a new Lakers career high, and in the past 3 games, Westbrook can average 21.3 points, 8 rebounds and 9.7 assists per game, shooting 53.2% from the field and 50% from three-point range (8 of 16 in total).
The second biggest surprise was The Wizard Augustine, who was almost seamlessly integrated into the team system as the Lakers' mid-season Rocket veteran.
In this game, Augustine went on a rampage, hitting all 7 shots, 6 three-pointers, and playing 25 minutes off the bench to shoot 20 points.
The last surprise is Gabriel and Stanley Johnson, these two young players were originally only marginal players, but after joining the Lakers, they gradually found their own positioning with hard work, the former got 9 points, 6 boards and 2 breaks, the latter got 12 points, 3 boards and 3 breaks, all of which provided the impact and vitality that the Lakers needed most on the court.