“‘I’m going to continue to stress it,” he said. “But what you guys see is a team figuring it out.”
Russell sat in front of the media and said this on Monday night, his team having just grinded its way through a win against the Orlando Magic.
By midway through the first quarter Wednesday, that journey seemed a long ways from coming to any kind of fruition against their neighbors, the Clippers.
A 12th-straight loss seemed certain, and it was almost assuredly going to be lopsided and ugly.
Then, thanks to an effort led by the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, it wasn’t.
LeBron James, who hadn’t beaten the Clippers since the bubble in 2020, scored 35 points in 42 minutes, helping the Lakers win 130-125 in overtime.
Kawhi Leonard scored 38, Paul George had 35 and Russell Westbrook had 24 for the Clippers.
Anthony Davis and D’Angelo Russell scored 27 each for the Lakers, and Austin Reaves, who had been stuck in an early-season slump, scored seven of the Lakers’ 13 overtime points, capping things with an over-the-shoulder lob to James.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
Leonard, playing on the second night of a back-to-back, hit his first five shots of the game during an 18-point first quarter. The Clippers would build a double-digit lead that grew to as many as 19 before back-to-back Lakers threes right at the end of the first kept things from being wildly out of hand.
From there, the Lakers sort of just hung around, never really threatening but never fading either.
Already short-handed with Rui Hachimura (concussion protocol), Jared Vanderbilt (heel) and Gabe Vincent (knee), the Lakers lost Taurean Prince during pregame warmups when he felt soreness in his left knee.
The Lakers thrust Cam Reddish into the starting lineup. Later, they were forced to play Davis alongside back-up centers Jaxson Hayes and Christian Wood. And the creativity all paid off.
With the three bigs on the floor, the Lakers flipped the game in the third quarter, fully erasing that double-git deficit to lead for the first time since Reddish opened the scoring with a layup.
Along the way the Lakers got contributions across the board, from Reddish’s on-ball defense to a timely buckets from Austin Reaves and energy from Hayes, Wood and Max Christie off the bench.
The Lakers would lead by as many as nine in the fourth before the Clippers clawed back thanks to big buckets from Leonard, George and Westbrook.
George hit three free throws with 17 seconds left after getting fouled by Reddish to tie the game, with overtime coming after Russell’s game-winner came up short.
But less than a minute into extra time, George fouled out and the Lakers got enough to pull out the comeback, sealing the game with a thunderous putback dunk from Wood in the final seconds.
It took time, like Russell said earlier in the week, the Lakers figuring it out in front of everyone’s eyes.