The Los Angeles Lakers trailed by as many as 19 points in the fourth quarter of their contest against the Milwaukee Bucks. But Anthony Davis, D’Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves led a furious comeback and Darvin Ham’s team kicked off their road trip with a huge 128-124 win over the Milwaukee Bucks without LeBron James.
Defeating one of the best teams in the NBA on the road without one of your two superstars is a major accomplishment and Ham believes this was undoubtedly one of the Lakers’ best wins of the year, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Hell yeah. Definitely top five of the season, might be top three. We dealt with a lot of adversity throughout the entirety of the game, were able to pull ourselves together, stay focused, never gave up. I always tell the team, we got to compete and be together, hold ourselves accountable and have a next-play mentality for 48 minutes, or however long it takes. Tonight it took 58 minutes.
“My hats off to Milwaukee, hell of a ballclub, they put a lot of pressure on you, they got a ton of weapons. Huge, huge, huge challenge to try to overcome some of the things that they threw at us, but again, we were able to do it together. Everybody contributed, everybody that stepped out there on the floor did something to help the team. But that was a hell of a team win right there.”
Anthony Davis was an absolute monster as matching up with Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo always seems to bring out the best in him. Davis finished with 34 points, 23 rebounds and four blocks despite suffering a knee injury that he played through. And Ham had nothing but praise for his star and the rest of the Lakers for stepping up in a big way:
“Just being in tune with him, each and every time out whether it’s a stoppage in play, they’re looking at a review, just getting him worked on, having our medical team and those guys keep massaging the leg keeping everything around the area that was a little inflamed, keeping it loose. He assured me that he was gonna push through and they said it was OK, just tolerance, whatever he could tolerate. Kudos to him, man. He played his ass off with 34 and 23. AR with a triple-double, DLo 29 and 12, Spencer had a rough shooting night but the one shot he made was a huge 3-point shot. All our guys, man. Rui came alive and had some big plays for us with a double-double. Taurean and his defense off the bench, Jaxson’s energy.
“To hold Dame to 9-for-29, Khris Middleton 4-for-15, those are hell of a performances. Now we got to fill our cups back up and go play against a really hard playing, highly competitive Memphis team, regardless of what their circumstances are with people being in and out the lineup. Taylor (Jenkins) has done a good job with that squad and keeping them competitive. So we got to get ready. We’ll enjoy this one tonight, but as soon as we wake up in the morning, we got to have a focus to try go get another one tomorrow.”
With the Lakers being down by so much in the fourth, Ham could have chosen to just rest his starters and pack everything in. And as it turns out, he nearly did, but gave his team one last chance to make a big push, and they responded:
“There was a timeout with I think 6:56 left in the fourth. I told them we got enough time to get this done, I think we might’ve been done like 12 at that point, I’m not sure, I’ll have to go back and see. We were right around 12 or 14, I want to say 12, and I told them hey, let’s just band together the next couple of minutes, let’s try to get it down to single digits and we got plenty of time to do what we need to do. And they went out there and we just started making plays, making shots, getting stops. To hold that team to 13 points in the fourth quarter, that’s money time. The guys did it. They banded together once again and competed their asses off and it was a great way to start off a six-game trip.”
It was undoubtedly one of the best wins of the season and a perfect way to start off this road trip. And now the Lakers must turn right around and focus as they head to Memphis on a back-to-back Wednesday night.
Anthony Davis credits Lakers for playing ‘high-level basketball’ in win over Bucks
Anthony Davis was also extremely proud of the Lakers for their performance and spoke highly of the team following the win.
Davis said the game was ‘high-level basketball’ and was extremely fun to play in overall. He praised the Lakers for stepping up without LeBron James and added it was great to start the road trip this way.
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