(Basketball news) The Los Angeles Lakers continued their late resurgence as they moved above .500 for first this season, they went on to beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 123-111. For the Lakers, Anthony Davis scored 17 of his 38 points in the fourth quarter and had 17 rebounds as LeBron James added 18 points and 10 rebounds and D’Angelo Russell had 12 points and 10 assists against his former team.
For the Timberwolves, Mike Conley had 25 points on 7-for-11 shooting with seven assists before fouling out, and Karl-Anthony Towns scored 23 points. The Lakers (39-38) won for the fifth time in six games to move into seventh place. They’re even with New Orleans, owning the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Pelicans. The Lakers improved to 9-4 since losing at home to the Wolves on March 3.
“You’ve got to have that one pivotal force that’s leading the charge, and in our case with this particular team here in the moment it’s AD,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “When he comes out and he’s aggressive and we’re feeding him and he’s not settling and he’s putting pressure on the paint, putting pressure on the rim, we find ourselves having a lot of success.”
“We’ve made some huge climbs, but we’re not finished,” said Davis, who had 38 points Wednesday in the win at Chicago. “We’re hungry to not only make the playoffs but make some noise.”
“He’s playing at a super high level right now,” Wolves coach Chris Finch said.
“We started to turn the ball over, and the ball started to stick much more,” Gobert said. “We kind of lost our flow offensively, and it really affected our defense.”
The Golden State Warriors turned up the heat as they beat the San Antonio Spurs 130-115. For the Warriors, Curry, Thompson and Poole combined for 20 3-pointers with Curry scoring 33 points, Thompson 31 and Poole 27. Poole joined the Splash Brothers with 200 3-pointers this season, making Golden State just the second team in NBA history to ever do it. For the Spurs, Keldon Johnson scored 22 points off the bench, Branham had 19 points and seven rebounds and Sandro Mamukelashvili added 13 points and 11 rebounds.
“It’s really special to be a part of, second team in history to do it,” Poole said. “Up there with really good company.”
“It’s not easy to make 200 3s in a season, so credit to Jordan, he works his tail off every day, same with Steph, just really cool that we have 200 (3-point) guys and I get to play with two of them,” Thompson said, predicting All-Star games for Poole soon. “He’s our future. We got so lucky to get a guy like him at the 28th pick, that doesn’t happen often.”
“Nice to accomplish feats that are rare in NBA history,” Curry said. “It’s special and obviously JP coming into his own as a great shooter and balancing just scoring overall and also stretching the defense out, it’s awesome.”
Also read: NBA: Celtics annihilate the Bucks while Nuggets lose to Pelicans
