The Los Angeles Lakers’ form in the Luka Doncic era continued with their sixth consecutive win, including a “double” against their neighbors the LA Clippers.
For the second time facing the LA Clippers within 3 days, the Los Angeles Lakers recreated the scenario that took place in the previous match.
LeBron James, Luka Doncic and his teammates held the Clippers to just 102 points in the entire game, while also attacking well enough to win the game.
Having defeated the Clippers on March 1 with a score of 106-102, today the Los Angeles Lakers continued to defeat their neighboring team with a score of 108-102, marking their third consecutive win against the LA Clippers in the 2024-25 NBA season.
Luka Doncic maintained his winning streak with 29 points, 9 assists, 6 rebounds and 2 steals. Luka’s long-range shooting was better today with 5 successful 3-pointers, but the minus point was 6 turnovers in 37 minutes of play.
Speaking of turnovers, LeBron James led both teams with 8 turnovers, leading to one of the most turnover-heavy games of the season. In return, James scored 17 points with 9 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals and had an important chase-down block in the final minute of play.
Dalton Knecht got more playing time to fill in for Austin Reaves (injury). He scored 19 points with 5 successful 3-pointers and 2 steals.
LeBron James is aiming for the 50,000th career point milestone today (including Regular Season and Playoffs). He reached his 49,999th point with just over 4 minutes left in the game and it looked like he would easily make history.
However, on a day of rather lackluster shooting (6-17 FG and 1-6 3PT), LeBron James did not score any more points in the last 4 minutes of the game and “saved” the opportunity to reach the 50,000 point mark for the next match.
On the LA Clippers side, Kawhi Leonard in perfect form scored 33 points with 13-23 FG in 40 minutes of play but that was not enough. James Harden only had 4-14 FG (2-9 3PT), scored 13 points and had 8 assists.
Shooter Norman Powell, one of the LA Clippers’ leading scorers this season (24.2 points/game), only played 9 minutes in this game. According to the initial update, Powell suffered a hamstring strain and was ruled out by the medical team.
This result helped the Los Angeles Lakers win the match against the LA Clippers with a total series score of 3-1 in the Regular Season, marking the second consecutive season that the purple and yellow army dominated the team in the same city (2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons) in the confrontation.
If counting from the 2023-24 season and before, the LA Clippers are a very formidable opponent for the Los Angeles Lakers. Statistics show that the Clippers have not only one but two 11-game unbeaten streaks against the Lakers , including 11 wins from late 2020 to April 2023 and 11 wins from January 2014 to June 2016.
More importantly for the Los Angeles Lakers (38-21), this win helped them surpass the Denver Nuggets and rise to 2nd place in the Western Conference standings. Also today, Denver lost 103-110 to the Boston Celtics and temporarily dropped to 3rd place with a record of 39-22.
The purple and yellow team’s schedule this week has 3 matches left, respectively against New Orlans Pelicans (Wednesday), New York Knicks (Friday) and Boston Celtics (Sunday), all in Vietnam time.
