Good News:Davis leads Lakers to their 8th win in 9 games, scores 35 points in…
Anthony Davis scored 19 of his 35 points and had 18 rebounds in the first quarter as the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Washington Wizards 125-120 on Wednesday night, their eighth win in nine games.
The Lakers are ninth in the Western Conference, meaning they’d have to win twice in the play-in tournament to make the main playoff bracket. But they’re making a push to move up. Los Angeles trailed Phoenix and Sacramento by 1 1/2 games entering Wednesday.
The Wizards are a loss shy of matching the franchise record of 63.Washington was coming off a nice win over Milwaukee on Tuesday night, and the Wizards made their first five 3-point attempts against the Lakers. Washington led 19-8 early on, and the problems mounted for Los Angeles when Davis took a stray elbow from Wizards 7-footer Tristan Vukcevic and stayed down on the floor for a bit.But Davis was able to play on, which was bad news for Washington. The Wizards didn’t have the size necessary to deal with him, and Davis dominated the rest of the quarter. By the time it was over, he’d already attempted and made 11 free throws, and the Lakers led 39-29.
Washington pulled back within two in the fourth and was having some success with its zone defense before James spun around Jared Butler and dunked to make it 109-105. That started a 12-0 run.
The Lakers had removed James and Davis, the game seemingly in hand, when the Wizards scored eight straight points to make it 125-120. After a Los Angeles turnover with 17.4 seconds remaining, James and Davis came back in.