Los Angeles Lakers: 4 Lessons from win over New Orleans Pelicans

Here are four lessons from the win by the Los Angeles Lakers against the New Orleans Pelicans. 

On Monday, the Los Angeles Lakers hosted an immaculate memorial service for Kobe Bryant. On Tuesday, LeBron James hosted a house party with about 20,000 of Kobe’s friends in the Staples Center putting on a personal showcase.  After the Lakers outlasted Jayson Tatum’s barrage in a win over the Celtics on Sunday, the hyped matchup between LeBron James and Zion Williamson was next on the NBA’s marquee list.

For the second straight game, the hype lived up to the billing as both LeBron and Zion both carried the weight of their respective teams all night long. Despite Zion’s explosion along with Brandon Ingram playing well, once again the Los Angeles Lakers beat the New Orleans Pelicans for the third time this season. The Lake Show locked up the season series with a 118-109 victory. The Lakers can complete a four-game sweep of the Pelicans on Sunday in New Orleans. Considering that is a Nationally televised game and LeBron gets up for hyped games, look for a win there too.

The Lakers are stringing together some historical streaks here Lakers fans.

• The Los Angeles Lakers are now 38-0 win leading after three quarters.
• The Los Angeles Lakers are 18-0 when LeBron scores more that 30 points. Spoiler alert he scored a few more points than 30. More on that later.
• The The Los Angeles Lakers barring some unforeseen crazy problems will win 18 straight road games against the Western Conference with a win against the Golden State Warriors on Thursday. Anyone think the streak will be snapped? Didn’t think so, let’s move on. 
• The team is riding a six-game winning streak (Good grief, anyone want to count the Warriors early and make it seven?) and have won eight of their last nine games. 

Lake Show Life will be doing a Ric Flair edition of Lake Show Life Lessons. The wrestling icon and the leader of the infamous “Four Horsemen” was in the crowd and did the team introductions.

Go ahead, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, go ahead brother! By the way, someone pass this on the team’s social media staff, Flair’s first name does not have a “K” it. Sorry, the writer is Flair’s biggest fan.

Now back to the game. To say this game was a defined by runs in a thorough understatement. The Los Angeles Lakers raced out to 17-4 lead early before the Pelicans caught up. Then LeBron had a personal 11-0 run in the 3rd quarter, before the Pelicans went on a huge run. The runs came when a certain player, oh forget it.

The game was actually in doubt in the 4th quarter before New Orleans went ice-cold chucking up 3-pointers starting L.A.’s fast break. Then James came up big in crunch time for the second straight game with back-to-back buckets at the rim with about three minutes left. Here’s one of those baskets here.

Soon after, Danny Green sealed it with his fifth 3-pointer basically from the same spot as his first to start the game with 51 seconds to play. It’s good to know that he’s still alive. He finished with 17 points, 5 rebounds, 4 assists and 2 steals.

The game was fun to watch, but it still was uneven. Time and time again in this game, the Los Angeles Lakers couldn’t stop blowing big leads and allowing New Orleans to stick around. With the Pelicans being a potential first round opponent in the playoffs, it’s not good to give this team confidence. Destroy them on Sunday, sweep them and plant the seed of doubt for the end of April.

This game showcased the future face of the NBA and the present. Lake Show Life Lessons will start with the future. Wooooooooo!