On April 3, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued to compete, and the Lakers, who ranked 9th in the West, played away against the Raptors, who ranked 12th in the East. Zhan Mei + Russell scored more than 20 points, the Lakers easily beat the Raptors to sit in the 9th position, and at the same time narrowed the gap with the top eight again, the pattern of the Western Conference play-offs changed again, and it was very desperate for the Warriors, and it was too difficult to improve the rankings.
In the opening stage, Barrett and Quickley took turns to play to become the absolute scoring points of the Raptors, and the team was not efficient overall, but they could still keep up with the rhythm. The Lakers were a little slow to heat up, and they adjusted in time to gradually stabilize the situation, Dinwiddie got up and down from the outside, Hayes scored on a dunk and caused a foul, and a wave of 8-0 small climax slightly widened the gap, leading by 9 points at 34-25 in the first quarter.
In the second quarter, Russell and Prince scored three points one after another, James couldn't defend himself at all when he broke through continuously, and the Lakers' offensive options were very reasonable, except for the mid-range shooting, the rest of the time they could hit the opponent's weak ring and impact the basket, but the defense was not ideal, so that the Raptors scored easily, conceding 33 points in a single quarter, and leading 64-58 by 6 points into halftime.
Coming back in the second half, the Lakers' tactics were still clear, Hachimura cut and dunked in the air, James forced a shot under the basket and caused a foul, the advantage came to double digits, and the defensive intensity limited the Raptors' scoring plummeted, and the situation was one-sided during this time, the 13-0 shock wave made the opponent desperate, and with Russell hitting another three-pointer at the top of the arc, the third quarter led by 21 points at 100-79.
In the last quarter, the Lakers played more and more smoothly, the offense cooperated smoothly, the gap continued to widen, it seemed that the suspense of the victory was not big, and the Raptors called timeouts one after another could not change the defeat, and Russell's wave of three-point rain directly made the game come to garbage time early. The Lakers beat the Raptors 128-111, James scored 23 points and 9 assists on 10-of-12 shooting, Davis scored 21 points + 12 rebounds, and Russell scored 25 points and 7 assists on 7-of-14 three-pointers.
The Lakers' record is 43-33 and sits in ninth place in the West, two wins ahead of the Warriors, and only one win away from the Kings in front of them.