Moritz Wagner finally celebrates his debut for the Los Angeles Lakers – but despite a strong LeBron his team clearly loses in Orlando. The winning streak of the Oklahoma City Thunder continues. Also the Rockets, Raptors and Clippers remain in the success track. Boston loses to Utah.
The positive news for all Clippers fans: LAC managed their fourth victory in a row, the team of head coach Doc Rivers is now slowly but surely in the upper third of the Western Conference table. The bad news? Against the Nets, L.A. had significantly more problems than expected.
Even without the injured Caris LeVert, the hosts, led by D’Angelo Russell (23 points, 10 assists) and Jarrett Allen (24), managed to take the lead with 15 points in the first half. Reason enough for Rivers to turn his rotation around a little and entrust the reservists with more playing time. That helped.
At the beginning of the fourth stage, in which the Clippers started with Lou Williams, Montrezl Harrell and three other bench players, the visitors quickly equalised the 7-point gap after three quarters and even took the lead for the first time.
“Your bank did a phenomenal job,” Nets coach Kenny Atkinson had to admit. The Nets couldn’t recover from the Clippers’ comeback. The guests finally decided the final section with 37:22 for themselves and won in the end relatively easy. Harrell and Sweet Lou each scored 16 points, Danilo Gallinari (28) and Tobias Harris (27) were also convincing.
Similar to the Clippers, the Pacers also experienced a rather mixed evening against a cellar child of the Eastern Conference. The home side were 14 points behind Atlanta and, to make matters worse, suffered an injury from Victor Oladipo.
The Shooting Guard stood just four minutes on the floor before he had to enter the cabin with knee problems. But someone jumped into the breach that you hadn’t expected first and foremost: Aaron Holiday.
“Aaron was ready. We won’t win this game if he doesn’t come in and play like he did at both ends of the court,” Head Coach Nate McMillan said with satisfaction. First the Pacers entered the game with a 26:4 run in the third quarter, then Holiday took over in the final section.
The 22-year-old rookie scored 9 of his 12 points in the fourth round, taking Indiana to the front with 6 points. The Pacers did not let themselves take the victory afterwards any more. Besides Holiday, Bojan Bogdanovic was also in an extremely good mood with 22 points. On the other side Jeremy Lin was top scorer with 16 points, Trae Young came only 9 points (3/11 FG).
Page 1: Clippers and Hawks tremble
Page 2: Lakers lose at Wagner debut
Page 3: Raptors, Rockets and Thunder further on track