LOS ANGELES — At this point, it’s a given that the Lakers will rarely be full-strength in high-stakes games for the rest of the season.
But something about playing the defending champions might just bring the best out of them.
In the last three meetings against Golden State, the Lakers have played some of their best games — and while “best” might have been a stretch for Sunday’s effort, “gutsy” was not as they muscled out a 113-105 victory against the Warriors, one of the teams ahead of them in the unyielding Western Conference.
Anthony Davis was the leading man Lakers fans have often wished him to be, manufacturing points on the left block in the final minute-and-a-half. When the Warriors guarded him with 2015 Finals MVP Andre Iguodala, he rose up to draw a foul. When they switched Draymond Green, a former Defensive Player of the Year, onto him, Davis drove inside and raised up for a tough floater — giving the Lakers a six-point lead with under 50 seconds to go.
His 39 points, eight rebounds, six assists and two blocks measured up to the biggest performance by far in a game featuring the return of Stephen Curry, who had 27 points, and a 22-point effort from Klay Thompson.
Davis helped the Lakers get the job done in their fourth straight game without LeBron James and D’Angelo Russell. The win moved them a half-game behind Utah and New Orleans, the No. 9 and No. 10 teams in the Western Conference.
It was the second straight game in which the Lakers struggled to find steady offense outside of Davis. The big man put veteran Warriors post defender Kevon Looney in a locker, getting him in foul trouble throughout and getting to the line 13 times.
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Of Davis’ available teammates, Austin Reaves (16 points, eight assists) — who came off the bench — was his best. The second-year guard took on play-making for the second unit, and hit critical shots in his stints, the biggest of which was probably a pull-up 3-pointer at the end of the third quarter that gave the Lakers a six-point lead in a game when they were always scraping Golden State off their backs.
The defining stretch came in the fourth, when the Warriors tied up the contest at 91 with 5:37 to go. The Lakers managed to score seven straight points, capped by free throws from Davis, and Golden State couldn’t pull even again. The Warriors never had a lead from the 9:33 mark of the first quarter.
If coach Darvin Ham called out his team’s urgency after their last loss to Minnesota, he couldn’t have argued with their tone to start Sunday’s early afternoon special. The Lakers rattled off an early rally led by Davis, who had 15 points in the first quarter alone — his second straight big start on offense. At one point, the Lakers led the Warriors by 20 points.
But the lead evaporated gradually as their shooters heated up, and the Lakers’ defense looked incapable of locating them as they slithered past screens for wide-open looks. Curry, who had not played in more than a month, finally got hot in a flash, scoring eight points in a two-minute span to bring the lead all the way down to a point.
More to come.