The Los Angeles Lakers’ new Big 3 is slowly beginning to come together and Tuesday’s victory over the Houston Rockets gave a glimpse as to how dominant they can be. LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and Anthony Davis combined for 84 points on 56.7% shooting in the Lakers’ win over the Houston Rockets.
After a rough start, the Lakers have now won three consecutive games and sit two games above .500 early on this season. All this despite four expected rotation pieces having yet to suit up and LeBron himself missing a couple of games with an ankle injury.
James believes this is proof of the resiliency of this Lakers team, but also understands that this season will be one long process as he said in a postgame interview on Spectrum SportsNet with Mike Trudell:
“We are a resilient group to start early on. We’ve had some adversity to start this season already, and I feel like we’ve matched it. We wanna continue to build off what we’ve done over the last week or so, two weeks. And if we do that we give ourselves a good chance to be better and better each month. But it’s all about the process and not getting too high, not getting too low, staying even keeled and getting better and learning from our mistakes, and learning from the good things we do as well.”
The Lakers have certainly pushed their way through some early season challenges, but if they are going to reach their potential, Westbrook will need to play at an extremely high level, which is why the Lakers acquired him.
LeBron believes Westbrook is getting more comfortable with his new team and insists that the Lakers need him to be himself, whom he considers the most explosive point guard in NBA history:
“Getting more and more comfortable. It’s always challenging going to a new system, to a new team, to a new group of guys. You always try to see yourself fitting in, but when you’re a special player you gotta fit out. And Russ is a special player and he’s being himself over the last few weeks and we need that. We need the attacking, down-the-hill, most explosive point guard in NBA history, with him and D-Rose, and we need that so he’s been bringing that and we love to see it.”
When it comes to pure athleticism and explosion, it is hard to disagree with Westbrook and Derrick Rose as being at the top of the list in terms of point guards. Someone the Lakers recently faced, Grizzlies point guard Ja Morant could be seeing his name climb up that explosive list soon as well.
Westbrook still has a ton of that explosiveness left in his body and the Lakers will need him to tap into that and be his best self in order to accomplish their ultimate goals.
Westbrook loves adaptability between himself, James and Davis
The beauty of having three superstars on a team is that someone is almost always going to be hot and the offense can run through any one of Westbrook, James or Davis. Westbrook spoke to that same point and enjoys their ability to adapt to any situation.
“It just varies. Sometimes maybe me, AD, Bron, whatever it may be,” the 32-year-old guard said of the All-Star trio’s partnership.
“That’s the beauty of our team, and being able to have, you know, AD and Bron on the floor, you have to do everything, if the guys are going in, be feeding them, whoever’s going, whoever has the better rhythm, you know, we just kind of play off whoever that may be.”
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