The Lakers beat the Timberwolves 142-125 on Sunday night, bringing their record to 21-3 and extending their winning streak to 4 games. If that sentence reads as a bit mundane, it’s because it is. I’ve honestly (nearly) run out of things to say about the team as a whole. They continue to play well, they continue to win, they continue to look like a long term contender. This is all super exciting in the big picture. It also makes finding creative ways to say “they won again” hard.
I’m not complaining, though. Give me 10 more wins in a row and I’ll happily struggle to write some more recaps, thank you very much. Hahaha.
In saying all that, 142 points as a team is a lot. So is 50. That’s how many Anthony Davis scored. 32 is also a lot, which is what LeBron scored. Add in Davis’ 7 rebounds, 6 assists, 4 steals, and 1 block and that’s an extremely well rounded box score for someone who got so many buckets. Don’t worry, though, LeBron added 13 assists of his own and chipped in with 4 rebounds and a steal. In case you were wondering about LeBron being outdone or not playing to a high enough standard.
The Lakers aren’t always this, but they’re showing they’re capable of it and that’s a pretty damn scary thing to consider. I mean, on a night where the Timberwolves put up a an offensive rating of 120.2, hit 15 of their 37 shots from distance, went 22-26 from the FT line, and only had 15 turnovers the Lakers still won by 17. As they did in wins over the Jazz and the Blazers, the Lakers didn’t just show they were better on a given night, they looked a few levels above their opponent.
The Wolves aren’t a bad team, either. They didn’t even play poorly, really. Towns could have had more an impact, for sure. And Wiggins wasn’t up to his season standard. But those two combined for 38 points on 12-22 shooting, several other guys played well and, again, as a team their outside shots fell at a much higher rate than their norm for the season. All things considered, I thought Minnesota played fairly well. It just didn’t matter that much.
Davis was simply too good, LeBron (despite some 1st half foul trouble) was too good, and strong scoring performances from Danny Green and Alex Carsuo just added to the onslaught. It’s one thing to have LeBron and AD play really well. That’s almost always going to do you in. But if the Lakers have two role players hit shots at the rate that Green and Caruso were while Bron and AD go off, that’s almost an automatic win. And, so it was.
Beyond all that, though, what is there to say? AD is awesome. LeBron is awesome. Each looks like a top 5 MVP candidate right now and playing together, to this level, is of the same mold as Steph/KD or LeBron/Wade or Shaq/Kobe. It’s just super rare.
And, I guess, I should have led with this rather than working my way to it 7 paragraphs in. We should appreciate it while it’s happening. It’s probably too easy to take it for granted or get caught up in how the wins just keep coming and get a little bored by it all. Nothing about this is actually boring, even if we run out of ways to describe it as it (or some version of it) happens night after night.
No notes from me today. Just enjoy this win with me. I’ll be back later with more.