Against an undersized and defensively challenged Raptors team, the Lakers got strong offensive performances from the frontcourt and some hot shooting from their perimeter players to cruise to a 128-111 win over the Raptors on Tuesday night. The victory moves the Lakers to 4-1 on their road trip and gives them 43 wins on the season, matching their total from all of last year with six games left on the schedule still to play.
The Lakers shot 51.5% from the field overall and 43.9% from behind the arc in this one, leveraging their size advantage inside to not only score efficiently in the paint but to collapse the defense and setup the types of open threes this team is more than capable of knocking down at a high clip.
LeBron James led the way in the former, driving relentlessly to attack the rim and, once there, finishing at a high level. LeBron made 10 of is 12 shot attempts from the field, with all but one of those makes coming in the paint and many coming right in the restricted area.
Whether attacking out of the pick-and-roll, working the dribble in isolation, or just pushing in transition, LeBron understood Toronto was light on rim protection defensively and came out on the other side with 23 points and nine assists by just putting his head down and getting to the paint over and over again.
Several of those LeBron dimes came on passes to Anthony Davis who finished the game with 21 points and 12 rebounds while shooting 10 of 20 from the field. Like LeBron, all but one of AD's makes came in the paint, with the majority of those also right at the rim against defenders not equipped to deal with his size.
AD punished the smaller Raptors with hard dives to the rim, deep post ups, and offensive rebounds for finishes inside, simply overpowering and towering over Toronto whenever he was single covered or found a gap in the defense. He was especially potent in the pick-and-roll, establishing lanes to the rim and then finishing over the top when his teammates found him with passes.
While LeBron and AD punished the Raptors inside, the rest of the team torched them from the outside, especially D'Angelo Russell.
D-Lo was one of five Lakers to hit more than one triple, but his seven makes from behind the arc far and away led the team. As he's known to do, Russell caught a rhythm early on and simply kept knocking down threes regardless of how the shot was created. Whether he was taking a pull up, coming off a screen, or spotting up off ball, Russell was ready to let it fly and his 25 points reflect just how good he was at knocking them down.
Beyond Russell, Spencer Dinwiddie (three for six), Rui Hachimura (two for four), Taurean Prince (two for two), and Max Christie (two for four) were also very sharp from behind the arc, stepping into those shots with confidence and making the defense pay for either helping off them, being late on their rotations, or simply not tracking them effectively as they moved off the ball or got up court in transition for early offense.
Beyond the production Dinwiddie, Prince, and Christie brought off the bench, Jaxson Hayes had a nice return to the lineup after missing the team's last game in Brooklyn with a calf contusion. Hayes brought his typical energy on both ends of the floor, hitting the glass hard on both ends and running the floor in transition to get the team easy baskets. On one such runout, Hayes had the play of the night when he caught the ball on the move, and then put the ball between his legs while in the air to throw down a nasty dunk.
And, ultimately, this was the type of night it was for the Lakers. They had their fun and put up big numbers on some highlight plays, but did so after giving picking up their attentiveness and effort defensively and really starting to lock in on taking away what the Raptors wanted. This was especially the case in the 3rd quarter, where the Lakers did a better job of staying in front of ball handlers to take away drives, ultimately holding Toronto to 21 points in the period (while scoring 36 of their own) to seize full control the game.
And with that, the Lakers will try to keep their momentum going when head to Washington D.C. to take on the Wizards on the second night of a back-to-back in the final game of the team's road trip.