LeBron James scored 22 points, grabbed a playoff career-high 20 rebounds, and passed for seven assists to lead the L.A. Lakers to a 117-111 overtime win versus the Memphis Grizzlies to take a 3-1 series lead. Austin Reaves paced the Lakers with 23 points, picking up the slack for Anthony Davis, who scored 12 points on 4-13 field goal shooting. Davis had as many turnovers as field goals, but he made his presence felt in the paint with 11 rebounds and four blocked shots.
Desmond Bane scored a game-high 36 points but he shot 13-29 from the field, including 3-12 from three point range as the teams combined to miss 59 three point shots. Ja Morant scored 19 points and tied James for game-high honors with seven assists, but he shot 8-24 from the field.
The Grizzlies squandered a golden opportunity to win this game; they led 83-81 at the end of the third quarter, and they pushed that margin to 97-90 with 5:13 remaining in regulation, but their erratic shooting proved fatal. The Grizzlies shot 7-18 from the field (.389) in the fourth quarter, including 2-11 from players not named Bane. Bane scored 14 fourth quarter points on 5-7 field goal shooting, including a fast break layup with 6.7 seconds remaining to put the Grizzlies up, 104-102. The Grizzlies needed one defensive stop to win the game, but instead of settling for a long jump shot James drove to the hoop and made a high arcing layup with less than a second left to tie the score.
In overtime, the Lakers stopped jacking up three pointers and scored eight points on 4-5 field goal shooting in the paint while the Grizzlies shot just 3-9 from the field overall in the extra session, including 1-5 from beyond the arc. Other game recaps will no doubt wax poetic about D'Angelo Russell's three fourth quarter three pointers without mentioning that he had a -16 plus/minus number before fouling out; the absence of Russell's questionable shot selection and subpar defense helped the Lakers in overtime, and it would be intellectually dishonest to mention three shots that he made without noting that his other "contributions" were major reasons why the Lakers were trailing in the first place.
Four of the nine Lakers who played in this game had negative plus/minus numbers: Davis plus the three players acquired in exchange for Russell Westbrook. The Lakers won this game and are leading this series despite the Westbrook trade, not because of it. Coach Darvin Ham understands this, regardless of what some commentators may say and what some delusional fans believe: D'Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Malik Beasley did not play at all in the overtime. Granted, Russell probably would have played if he had not fouled out--and the Lakers would have been worse off with Russell in the game.
Here is how the "triumphant troika" did versus Memphis in game four:
Russell had 17 points on 7-15 field goal shooting. He is averaging 14.5 ppg on .368 field goal shooting during this series.
Vanderbilt had 15 points on 6-9 field goal shooting while accumulating a game-worst -18 plus/minus number. He is averaging 6.8 ppg on .579 field goal shooting during this series.
Beasley had three points on 1-4 field goal shooting. He is averaging 2.5 ppg on .250 field goal shooting in during this series.
Playoff games are won in the paint. James dominated the boards, and during crunch time he drove to the hoop instead of settling for three pointers; he looked less like a stat padder and more like a great player who was doing what needed to be done for his team to win. Davis was a non-factor offensively, but the importance of his presence in the paint defensively and on the boards should not be minimized.
I picked the Grizzlies to win this series, and I may have been wrong about that--but I have been 100% right about what the Lakers need to do to win: they need James and Davis to dominate in the paint. All of the talk about "lasers" and the role players that the Lakers acquired in exchange for a future Hall of Famer are just distractions from the real story.