Getty LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers.
On Monday night, the Los Angeles Lakers walked into Crypto.com Arena in hopes of extending their series lead to 3-1. It wasn’t going to be easy, though, as the Memphis Grizzlies were desperate to avoid that dreaded fate.
But the Lakers prevailed.
It was an extremely close game, especially with how dominant Desmond Bane was throughout the night, but some big-time clutch plays at the end sealed it for LA. After the contest, Anthony Davis praised LeBron James and his other teammates for their performances.
“We got that chemistry,” Davis said via the NBA Interviews YouTube channel. “Obviously, it was a performance for me tonight on the offensive end. He [James] just took over down the stretch. Got us a bucket to go into overtime. D-Lo [D’Angelo Russell] with two huge threes to get us back in the game. To cut it to one. Dennis [Schroder] playing through his pain. Austin [Reaves], Rui [Hachimura], all our guys, man. It was a good team effort. This team is not going to go away. It was a must-win game for us, and we played well down the stretch and just covered for one another.”
With just seconds remaining on the clock, James drove to the basket and pulled off an absurd layup to tie the game. And on the following play, Davis blocked Ja Morant’s jump shot, sending the game to overtime.
In the extra period, James and Davis took over, scoring a string of clutch buckets and propelling the Lakers to victory.
James put up some incredible stats against the Grizzlies in Game 4. He finished the night with 22 points, 20 rebounds, seven assists, and two blocks. The superstar shot 8-of-18 from the field and 1-of-7 from behind the three-point line.
Lakers’ LeBron James Praises D’Angelo Russell
In the fourth quarter, the Grizzlies had a solid lead. With the Lakers searching for offense, Russell, who was struggling with his shot throughout the entire game, nailed three huge three-pointers within the span of a couple of minutes.
His shots eventually gave the Lakers the lead and got them back in the contest. After the game, James had some high praise for Russell.
“Without D-Lo and that fourth quarter, when the game was kind of stalling out, and we couldn’t get a good shot, we couldn’t get a good look, D-Lo hit back-to-back 3s and gave us an opportunity to even put ourself in a position to go to overtime,” James told Chris Haynes of TNT. “So that was huge.”
Jason Richardson on Lakers’ Austin Reaves
In other news, former NBA star Jason Richardson recently showed love to Reaves, calling him the Lakers’ third option.
“Every team has that third option,” Richardson told Christos Tsaltas of SDNA. “And so now when you look at the Lakers, Austin Reaves has become that third option and sometimes he becomes the second or first option because the way he plays the game. He can shoot the ball. He can dribble. He understands the game and he takes a lot of pressure off LeBron and AD. So it’s actually amazing to see the development of how far he has come along. His confidence level is sky-high. Those guys are believing in him. I think he took one of the last shots of the game to seal the game. So that lets you know how good of a player he is.”
