LOS ANGELES — Have we mentioned the unpredictability of the Lakers lately?
Unpredictability, to be clear, in terms of never knowing exactly what you’re going to get out of this group. Two nights after laying a giant purple egg here against Sacramento, letting what was once a 19-point lead get away, the Lakers faced the Milwaukee Bucks without LeBron James (out after having aggravated his sore ankle) and came away with their most inspiring victory of the year.
And the main architect of that 123-122 triumph was a guy who most people figured would be gone at the trading deadline.
D’Angelo Russell had the knockout blow, a teardrop of a jumper with 5.9 seconds left to retake the lead, after which newcomer Spencer Dinwiddie secured the win by blocking Damian Lillard’s jumper as time ran out.
Even before that, Russell’s 44-point night included a 9-for-12 performance from behind the 3-point line, each succeeding trey bringing a greater crescendo of noise from the home crowd.
Along the way, Russell was the fifth player in team history to have eight or more 3-pointers in three different games, joining a group that includes Magic Johnson, Nick Van Exel, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and LeBron James. He has 171 this season, moving into No. 6 on the franchise’s all-time list for single-season 3-pointers, and his total of 482 as a Laker puts him ninth on the team’s career list. (Presumably, Kobe Bryant’s 1,827 is out of reach.)
But the details and the numbers, in this case, are less important than the glimmer of hope a night like this provides, even if so many of those other hopeful moments have been fool’s gold for a team that is 35-30 and, by Friday night, was a half-game ahead of 10th-place Golden State at the bottom of the play-in zone.
If there somehow really is a deep playoff run in them, Russell probably will have a key role.
When Russell was first traded by the Lakers to Brooklyn in June of 2017, two years after they’d drafted him with the…
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