Basketball Daily

In the recent meeting between the visiting Houston Rockets and Los Angeles Lakers, backup center DJ Mbenga who rarely gets any playing time really showed off his talents.  DJ played only 9 minutes of game time and put up 8 points on 4 for 7 shooting, plus he had 2 key blocks and pulled down 1 board.  The game was tied at halftime with 44 a piece, but like most other nights, the dominant Lakers pulled away and grabbed a pretty easy victory with the final score ending at 93-81.  With this win, the Lakers hit the 60 mark on the year, putting them only one game behind Cleveland for the best record in the NBA.

The leading scorers for L.A. were Pau Gasol with 23 points, Kobe Bryant with 20 points and Derek Fisher with 15 points.  There were no other Lakers in double figures this night.  As a team, they handled the ball extremely well committing only 10 turnovers.  L.A. has clinched the number one spot in the Western Conference already, it’s just a race with the Cavaliers to see who will end up with the best record at the end of the regular season.

The Chicago Bulls faced off against the visiting Los Angeles Lakers and completely folded in the second half.  After the Lakers produced a small run in the beginning of the game, the Bulls made a statement and dominated them the rest of the first half.  Coming out of the locker room in the second half the Bulls completely fell apart and the Lakers overcame a 16 point lead, mainly due to their stellar play of the second unit.  The game didn’t even end up close with a final score of 117-109.

The top three scorers for the Lakers were Kobe Bryant with 28 points, Pau Gasol with 23 points and Trevor Ariza with 18 points.  The high man off the bench was Jordan Farmar with 13 points on 5 for 10 field goal shooting.  This was the first game on the Lakers last road trip for the season and they have started it off well.  L.A. now improves their record to 55 wins and 14 losses on the year.

The Golden State Warriors met up with the Los Angeles Lakers in the second game of TNT’s double header on Thursday night.  What seemed to be a blowout for the Lakers on several occasions didn’t stop the Warriors from continuing to fight and dispel the many double digit leads LA had.  At one time in the fourth quarter Golden State was only trailing by 3 points, but the Lakers would increase their lead and eventually they got the win with the final score ending at 114-106.

The top three scorers for the Lakers were Kobe Bryant with 21 points, Pau Gasol with 21 points and Lamar Odom with 16 points.  All of the Lakers starters ended up getting double figures in points.  The high man off the bench was Sasha “The Machine” Vujacic with 12 points.  The Lakers have the second best record in the NBA, only behind by one game.