The Los Angeles Lakers have already shown they can win with historic efforts from their two stars. But more critically for a team that fancies itself a real contender, on Sunday L.A. showed it can win with contributions from the team’s role players as well, with a few of their less-heralded contributors helping the Lakers escape San Antonio with a 103-96 win over the Spurs.
It’s the sixth game of the season and we’re taking it entirely too seriously. That being said, this first matchup between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Toronto Raptors since...you know...was pretty important for Milwaukee.
The Bucks were rolling in the first half, slicing to the rim at will and seeing their three-pointers falling. In the second half, Nick Nurse deployed a zone defense that stymied the Bucks’ offensive dynamism, and a barrage of Lowry threes closed the gap going into the fourth quarter. The Bucks’ defense held firm, and Milwaukee improved to 4-2 on the season.
BOSTON -- Jayson Tatum made a big play at a big moment for the Boston Celtics.BOSTON -- Jayson Tatum made a big play at a big moment for the Boston Celtics. Then he made it sound very routine. Tatum hit a turnaround jumper with 1.3 seconds remaining, and the Celtics beat the New York Knicks 104-102 on Friday night for their fourth straight victory.
The Houston Rockets came out victorious in what will likely be one of the more memorable games of the entire season, defeating the Washington Wizards by a final score of 159-158. You read that correctly, One Hundred and Fifty-Nine to One Hundred and Fifty-Eight. No overtime, no double overtime, just 48 minutes and (obviously) no defense.
The best razzmatazz hop skiddily-doo Luka Doncic could muster wasn’t enough to stop LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers, who beat the Dallas Mavericks 119-110 in a thrilling, come-from-behind overtime victory on Friday.
The Lakers got a hallmark performance from James, who notched his second triple-double of the season with 39 points, 12 rebounds and 16 assists, including the biggest assist of the game to Danny Green, who hit a three to send the game into overtime. Green struggled to hit open shots in the first half, but he hit the big ones with the game on the line.
After years of humiliating defeats by the upper echelon of the NBA, the Phoenix Suns were able to extract some revenge over a long time bully in the Golden State Warriors. The Suns beat the Warriors 121-110, leading by as much as 34 at one point in the game, and there were stretches where Phoenix was just running laps around the team.
While the significant majority of the local and national sports world locked their eyes on a Washington, D.C. baseball team that did something cool, the city’s professional basketball team also played a group from the city of Houston in its first home game of the season. What ensued was one of the stupidest, silliest, and most exhilarating games in NBA history — nay, sports history.
