LOS ANGELES — Luka Dončić stepped up to the free throw line in the third quarter.
The Lakers’ NBA Cup court plastered in gold. The crowd an ocean of the same color. Dončić was engulfed, but instead of the sound of waves flooding the senses, it was the MVP chants, each growing louder than the next.
Dončić made his first, marking his 40th point of the game and 20th in the quarter, capping off a 34-15 run in the frame that brought Los Angeles back from a 16-point deficit and gave them an 87-75 lead over
the Portland Trail Blazers.
It was a run that put the Lakers in front heading into the final frame and helped them exact revenge on a Blazers side that handed them one of their two losses as they won 124-118 on Friday.
“Anytime you start a half down, you want to get to momentum early,” head coach JJ Redick said of the third quarter. “We were playing from behind the first half, so I thought it was really important to get off to a good start, and we did that. … for the most part, it felt like we had control of the rest of the game, and a lot of that had to do with how we defended in the third quarter.”
It’s impossible to gloss over Dončić in this game, who finished with 53 points on 17-of-33 shooting from the field, passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the 10th-most 50-point games in NBA history. The Lakers made their run and took control in the third quarter, but the momentum shifted when Dončić drained a shot from the opposite 3-point line as time expired in the first half.
“[That shot] changes the whole energy,” Dončić said postgame. “In the team and in the gym. That was an important shot to make. So that’s why I decided to make it.”
At the time, the Lakers had made just three of their 23 3-point attempts and were enduring what looked like the game where the offense inevitably regressed to the mean. Instead, including Dončić’s heave, Los Angeles made eight of their last 14 deep shots en route to a much-needed win.
Redick has preached patience and steady incline as a team all year, but a win like this for sole position at the top of the Western Conference — and on NBA Cup night no less — was a clear measure of their resilience.
And yet, Redick thinks they’re still building.
“I think we’re already a really together group,” he added Friday. “You don’t become a resilient team in 10 games, five games, 20 games. It takes a full season to build that resiliency. … But, the fact that this is a very together group and we’ve already shown a level of resiliency, it’s exciting, it’s promising and I want to continue building on that.”
Much of this lands on Dončić’s shoulders. He’s having a historical season, one of the best we’ve ever seen, but he’s a product of the team around him. It’s a roster he had his hands all over, collectively crafted around his needs at every corner, a point driven by Portland head coach Micah Nori before they clashed on Friday.
Nori says it’s Dončić‘s MVP to lose, “hands down,” but because of everything around him. The shooting, the defending, Walker Kessler’s rolling. It’s all working in unison.
The Lakers have 72 games to go. It’s not always going to be like this. But again, a night like Friday works wonders for the marathon Redick is trying to run.
“We all want good results,” he said. “This is going to be a long process and it’s going to take time for us to become a great basketball team. I like that our guys have responded to some adversity. Tonight was a great example, where we get down pretty big early and we just stick with it.”
You can follow Connor on Twitter at @cmorenoNBA.
