LOS ANGELES — A couple of months ago, Lakers coach Darvin Ham and his staff introduced a new statistic: limbo rate, which is supposed to help quantify how well the team does, or does not do, moving on to the next play.
If the last couple of months have been any indication, the game-to-game limbo rate isn’t an issue for this team, with the Lakers bouncing back from Saturday’s home loss to the Denver Nuggets with a 116-104 home victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night, winning for the 10th time in the past 14 games and taking the season series (3-1) from one of the top teams in the Western Conference.
The Lakers haven’t lost consecutive games that weren’t part of a back-to-back set since mid-January, but they remain at the No. 9 spot in the standings.
“We’re behind the eight-ball a little bit, but we’re right there,” Lakers star Anthony Davis said. “In the event we don’t get the top six, you gotta go through the whole play-in kind of process again. We don’t really care what seed we’re in. We proved it last year, it doesn’t matter.
“We don’t look at it is, as we’d rather have this matchup than this matchup. For us, it’s just about getting in and tackling each opponent from there.”
Led by D’Angelo Russell (26 points, six rebounds and three assists), Davis (24 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and three blocked shots) and LeBron James (19 points, 11 rebounds, eight assists), the Lakers (34-29) defensively smothered a Thunder (42-19) team that entered Monday atop the Western Conference standings.
Austin Reaves (16 points on 6-for-8 shooting to go with seven assists and six rebounds) made a pair of 3-pointers late in the first half to help get the Lakers back in the game while also being the primary defender against Thunder guard and league MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (20 points on 5-for-13 shooting, seven rebounds, four assists).
“He did a great job,” Davis said of Reaves’ defense against…
Read the full article here
