GOOD NEWS: LOS ANGELES LAKERS HAVE ANNOUNCE THE SINGING OF SOME NEWLY PLAYERS IN THEIR TEAM TODAY…………
WASHINGTON — — Anthony Davis scored 19 of his 35 points in the first quarter and had 18 rebounds, helping the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Washington Wizards 125-120 on Wednesday night for their eighth victory in nine games.
LeBron James had 25 points and nine assists, and Rui Hachimura scored 19 points for the Lakers against his former team. Davis was 10 of 17 from the field and made 15 free throws without a miss.
Jordan Poole led Washington with 29 points.
The Lakers are ninth in the Western Conference, meaning they’d have to win twice in the play-in tournament to make the main playoff bracket. But they’re making a push to move up. Los Angeles trailed Phoenix and Sacramento by 1 1/2 games entering Wednesday.
“We want to continue to play good basketball,” James said. “The postseason’s still kind of a ways away. … Postseason prep, all that other stuff is totally different from the regular season, so wherever we fall is where we fall.”
The Wizards are a loss shy of matching the franchise record of 63.
Washington was coming off a nice win over Milwaukee on Tuesday night, and the Wizards made their first five 3-point attempts against the Lakers. Washington led 19-8 early on, and the problems mounted for Los Angeles when Davis took a stray elbow to the nose from Wizards 7-footer Tristan Vukcevic and stayed down on the floor for a bit.
But Davis was able to play on, which was bad news for Washington. The Wizards didn’t have the size necessary to deal with him, and Davis dominated the rest of the quarter.
