It’s clear after Saturday that the Los Angeles Lakers simply cannot beat the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets. But on Monday evening, the basketball world received a reminder they can defeat just about any other team on any given night.
They faced the Oklahoma City Thunder, who came in with the Western Conference’s best record and with a top-four ranking in both offensive and defensive rating. It was another contest in a very rough stretch for the Purple and Gold that will continue to see them playing teams with better records than them almost exclusively until the final week of March.
The Lakers started slowly, trailing 22-11 after committing six turnovers in the first six minutes of the first quarter. But their bench sparked a rally that tied the score at 25 at the end of the period, and that momentum continued in the second quarter. They led by as many as 10 points in the first half and were up 52-43 at halftime, as they held one of the NBA’s most efficient offenses to just 30.6% shooting.
Los Angeles extended that advantage to 89-72 after three quarters and cruised to a seemingly easy 116-104 victory. The victory improved its record to 34-29 and pushed it into ninth place in the Western Conference, and it is just two games behind the sixth-place Phoenix Suns.
While the Lakers were efficient to the tune of 51.2% overall field-goal shooting and 47.1% from 3-point range, they had trouble holding onto the basketball until the third quarter, when they finally started to limit their turnovers. But they did have a massive 55-38 advantage in rebounding and a 22-15 edge in second-chance points, which has rarely happened this season.
Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Lakers’ performance on Monday was their defense, another department in which they have struggled. They allowed Oklahoma to shoot just 39.4% from the field, and combined with their prowess on the boards, it’s a winning combination they need to replicate on a consistent basis.