MAVS NEWS:

[omahen]

I know it was overtime, but every Nicks starter played over 40 minutes.  Crazy.

They simply don't play their bench, going on with roughly 9 man rotation. Guys like Delon Wright don't seem to get any minutes. However, this was a really rare game where Lakers starters also played heavy minutes. Hayes and Reaves the only ones under 40 minutes, but I am sure Reaves would play even more if his shot would be falling. 

Excellent game though, real playoff like effort imho. Some tough one on one defenses, but both teams still created a bunch of open looks. Neither team shot well, Knicks were horrible with 23 % from three. Lakers making most of their open looks in 4th was the difference. The game imho showed once again that Towns is not a winning player. When things go serious, he is at a weak role player level. His defense is bad and was targeted by Lakers whole game. Just 3 of 13 on offense. Very dissapointed by Mikal Bridges. Took just 6 shots in 43 minutes. Too small to guard LeBron. They had Anunoby on Luka, but I wonder if it wouldn't be better to switch them. Hart fights really hard, if only he would take more threes, as Lakers were literally intentionally leaving him wide open whole game. 

Lakers with another awesome performance on defense. LeBron was guarding KAT and Hayes was on Hart and it mostly worked. Reaves wasn't great in his first game back, so some reserve there. It seems so far that their small ball is really a challenge for opponents. No idea why they went with Len as their emergency back-up center, as smaller but more agile Jemison (2-way deal) works much better in their defensive scheme. Lakers bench was 7 of 12 from three thanks to Vincent and Knecht (New York one was 2 of 12).  Luka had a very good game, even though he had some struggles against great defense by Anunoby (weird thing to say since Luka scored 32 points). He was simply a much better floor general than Brunson.