Lakers Are Finding Ways To Win Without LeBron James And Anthony Davis

Kyle Kuzma (YouTube)

The Los Angeles Lakers came away with a very interesting win on Saturday night. Despite being without their two biggest superstars in LeBron James (flu) and Anthony Davis (hip), Los Angeles came through with a convincing 125-110 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Why is this Lakers win so significant? Well, this is the first time in 100 games that LeBron James has missed (according to ESPN), that his team produced a wire-to-wire win without trailing at any point of the basketball game.

The Lakers were led by Kyle Kuzma, who had 36 points in 40 minutes. Kuzma, the 24-year-old power forward from Flint, Michigan, has been a subject to trade rumours over the last while as the Lakers try to improve their team even stronger in 2019-20.

In a complete team effort, Kuzma was in fact one of seven Lakers to reach the double-digit mark in scoring. The other Lakers players to accomplish the feat were Rajon Rondo (21 points), Quinn Cook (13 points), Dwight Howard and Troy Daniels (12 points each) and Alex Caruso and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (11 points).

Rondo and Howard each had double-doubles. Howard had 14 rebounds and Rondo had 12 rebounds.

The Lakers got out to a fast 41-19 lead after the first quarter and did not look back. With the win, they improved to a record of 32 wins and seven losses.

The Lakers won two impressive games on the weekend. On Friday, with James but without Davis, Los Angeles scored 79 first-half points in a 129-114 win over the Dallas Mavericks. That was the most number of points they have scored in the first half of a road game since the shot clock was instituted in 1954-55 according to ESPN. 

The Lakers were not the only team to have a big first half on the road this past weekend. Also on Friday, the Miami Heat scored a franchise-record 42 points in the first quarter but ended up losing 117-113 to the Brooklyn Nets. The Heat were then upset 124-121 to the New York Knicks on Sunday.