Rui Hachimura soars for an unmolested jam. —Reuters
SAN FRANCISCO—With LeBron James sidelined and their new recruits still getting up to speed, the LA Lakers on Saturday snapped a three-game skid with a 109-103 victory over defending champion Golden State in a game robbed of superstar glamor but definitely high on endgame drama.
Dennis Schroder 26 points for the Lakers, and Rui Hachimura added 16 with D’Angelo Russell—both newly-arrived veterans in the trade deadline deal—chipped in 15 with five rebounds and six assists. Anthony Davis had a quiet scoring night with just 13 points on five-of-19 shooting.
James continued to sit it out because of a sore ankle less than a week after he became the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, while the Warriors missed Stephen Curry in the back-and-forth battle.
The Warriors took the lead on Jordan Poole’s three-point play midway through the fourth, but Russell answered with a pair of baskets, drawing a foul and converting the free throw on the second.
It was tied again with 5:01 to play, but a Hachimura three-pointer put the Lakers up for good.
Defensive presence
While he was not an offensive force, Davis grabbed 13 rebounds and came up with two of his three blocked shots in the final two minutes.
“One thing about me, I’m able to shift my mind on the defensive end,” Davis said. “So I’m not getting foul calls, I’m not making shots, I never give up on the other end. Rebounds, blocked shots, whatever my team needs me to do.”
Meanwhile, the first game that Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving played together ended in a 133-128 overtime loss by Dallas to the Kings in Sacramento, where De’Aaron Fox scored 36 points, including six charities in the final 18.4 seconds.
Fox scored 26 of his total in the fourth period and overtime, while Damontas Sabonis had 22 points and 14 rebounds before fouling out with 1:27 left. It was his league-leading 44th double-double of the season.
Irving had 28 points and Doncic 25 points and nine rebounds in the loss, which still had coach Jason Kidd saying nice things about his superstar guard tandem.
“I thought it was good,” Kidd said. “It was natural, nothing forced. It’s going to make us that much better. They did an incredible job.”
“Amazing. Only our first game together, but I think it’s so fun to play with this guy,” Doncic, who missed a number of games with a heel injury, said of Irving. “He’s an amazing basketball player and I think it’s going to be really fun and today, first game, it was really fun, too.” AFP