Anthony Davis Dominates Wolves As Lakers Continue To Push for 6th Seed

The Lakers’ win over the Wolves last night included everything their fans and coaches could want, including Davis continuing to take the torch from James and the purple and gold putting on offensive and defensive clinics.

The 39–38 Lakers are currently in 7th place in the West, 1.5 games behind the 41–37 Warriors and Clippers, who are essentially tied for 6th and 5th seeds in the West. Lakers own tie-breaker over Warriors but not Clippers.
Lakers have 5 games left: @ Rockets, @ Jazz, @ Clippers, vs Suns, vs Jazz. Warriors have 4 games left: @ Nuggets, vs Thunder, @ Kings, @ Blazers. Clippers have 4 games left: @ Pelicans, vs Lakers, vs Blazers, @ Suns.

Last night’s game was the Lakers’ biggest win of the season. With Davis again playing like an MVP and James slowly working his way back into game shape after missing over a month, the Lakers wil be a playoff nightmare.
Like Isaiah Thomas said, there’s no team in the West that wants to face the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs. Right now, it looks like the likely #3 seed Kings are the team the #6 seed Lakers would play in first round.

With just 4 games to go, the Lakers right now have a lock on the 7th seed at worst and a good chance to move up to the #6 seed and get a week off for injured superstars LeBron James and Anthony Davis to rest and recover.
The Lakers can expect a lot of strategic positioning moves over the last few games as teams try to win or lose games to avoid having to play L.A. in the first round of the playoffs. Going to be interesting to see what teams do.

With the West wide open, the Lakers sent a message to the rest of the NBA with their dominating win last night on the road against the Timberwolves: Expect the 2023 NBA Championship to go through the Los Angeles Lakers.

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Anthony Davis Takes Torch from LeBron James

Anthony Davis’ injury woes the past three seasons have led many Lakers fans to lose faith that he could ever prove to be good or healthy enough to take the torch from LeBron James as the Lakers leading prime superstar.

With James still working to get back to superstar status after being out for a month, Anthony Davis came to the rescue again, taking over and carrying the Lakers on his back for a second straight MVP-quality performance.
Anthony Davis not only led the Lakers to the team’s biggest win of the season but he did it on a bum ankle that he sprained early in the third quarter just as the Lakers were surging to get back into the game.

I remember thinking as the game went to commercial that this might be the end of the Lakers’ season and wondering whether this also might be the injury that finally forced the Lakers to consider trading Anthony Davis.
Fortunately, Davis was able to walk off the injury and elevated his play to another level as the Lakers halfcourt defense shut down the Timberwolves and the Lakers closed the game by relentlessly going to AD in the post.

If the Lakers are going to win their 18th NBA championship this season, it will be because Anthony Davis finally elevates his game to MVP level and at last takes the torch from LeBron James and the Lakers become his team.

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New Lakers’ Starting Lineup Sizzles

The Los Angeles Lakers’ new-look starting lineup of Russell, Reaves, Vanderbilt, James, and Davis has now played together for 25 minutes and posted a sizzling 132.0 OffRtg, stifling 108.5 DefRtg, and +23.5 NetRtg.

The new-look starting lineup provides the Lakers with a balanced two-way lineup that possesses excellent size, length, athleticism, and versatility while balancing the team’s need for shooting, playmaking, and defense.
Russell and Reaves provide the Lakers with a backcourt that can shoot, playmake, and defend. Davis, James, and Vanderbilt provide the Lakers with a front court that can switch and defend every position on the court.

As the Lakers head into the playoffs, Ham is also smartly narrowing his rotation down to 8 key players, the five starters plus Schröder, Hachimura, and Gabriel with additional spot minutes from Brown, Jr. and Beasley.
The only possible change could be the re-insertion of backup center Mo Bamba into the rotation. While Gabriel has been playing well, getting Bamba back would give the Lakers another desperately needed big man.

The Lakers greatest challenge to successfully finishing the season is health. Rob Pelinka’s moves at the trade deadline clearly gave the Lakers a major roster upgrade. The only question is whether the trades came too late.

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Lakers’ Defense Dominates Timberwolves

After trailing the Wolves 65–55 at halftime, the Lakers essentially came out and shut Minnesota down, holding them to just 18 points in the 3rd quarter and just 18 in the fourth quarter plus 10 garbage points in last two minutes.

With Anthony Davis, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Rui Hachimura protecting the rim in the second half, the Lakers turned the Timberwolves into a jump shooting team as they went from down 10 to up 7 to start 4th quarter.
Besides Davis and Vanderbilt, Shroder, Hachimura, and Gabriel all had outstanding second halves as they led Lakers’ dominant defensive charge, making steals, deflecting passes, blocking shots, and taking charges.

Overall, the third quarter was probably the best defensive quarter the Lakers have had all year long. Ironically, right in the middle of this great 3rd quarter defensive run was when Anthony Davis twisted his ankle.
If there was a moment this season when everything hung in the balance, it was there in the third quarter when AD went down in pain holding onto his ankle. Fortunately, AD said later he was playing Sunday for sure.

Since the trade deadline, the Los Angeles Lakers’ 110.3 defensive ranking was #1 in the entire league. They also lead the league in rebounding and rank best in the NBA in defending without sending opponents to the line.

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Lakers’ Offense Feeds AD To Close Game

One of the major traits of a great NBA coach is the ability to find weakness in the other team’s defense and then relentlessly attack that weakness until the other team makes an adjustment. Darvin Ham is learning that fast.

Once the Lakers had built a 10-point lead over the Timberwolves, they displayed some of their best offensive discipline we’ve seen this season as they consistently got the ball to Anthony Davis where he could score at will.
So many times over the last three seasons, we’ve seen the Lakers find an opening in the opponent’s defense only to ignore it going forward and start playing iso-ball with LeBron or Anthony rather than running a set play.

Last night, we saw the opposite. Even though he was limping a little from his twisted ankle, the Lakers either ran pick-and-rolls to get AD easy dunks or floaters or down-picks so he could catch the ball moving to the basket.
Best of all, Russell and Schröder never let the Wolves off the hook. Instead, every single time down the court they set up plays to get the ball to AD, often coming off a down-pick and/or rolling to the hoop for an easy shot.

The ability to be hyper-focused and successful in getting Anthony Davis the ball to close out games was a huge development in the Lakers’ half-court schemes that should help them in those critical end game situations.