Nov 29, 2025
3 min read
The Lakers is a third of the percent-best of the game player in the year in the year and continuously met.
LOS ANGELES -- If the first meeting between the Lakers and Mavericks this season was supposed to feel special, it didn't.
No angry glasses on the Dallas bench, no hard stares on the floor between the Mavericks' past and future.Luka Donich's sentiment was more visceral.
There was no obvious villain hiding in plain sight in the Mavericks executive seats who was a nerd.Nico Harrison was fired and wasn't there to be pleased or bullied.
This, at 129-119 victory over the Mavericks, felt like the rest of the night - a feeling that shows both regular basketball events playing the 18th basketball in their season.
Donic, the player the Lakers should never have, torched another defense with ball fakes, barbaric bursts of power and speed — all paired with emergency break layups.35 point score;No big dealSeen earlierAppeared again
"I think it's a little easier now," Donny said of watching his old team, "but like I said the Dallas game always means something to me. "I've got a lot of friends there. It's always special. It will always be special to me."
Just not as special as the first few.
The Maricks Player in some of the things that is not in one of the NBA is the best of the players after the first step, and the disruption of the body.He had 38 to lead the team - which seemed like a lot a year ago.Now he can finish on the all-star team.
"I told you a long time ago, when is AR going to play ball, when is he going to be a rookie? I don't even remember," LeBron James said after Reaves' big game.
"I'm told by all, he can be a panel.
Dončić's revenge and Anthony Davis' return from injury made Reaves the toughest player to stop on the court.
"I think he is one of the best basketball players in this way, he has learned this way, he makes space for others, he said. "It is very good. I am happy that you are in my team."
And the one who has been doing this the longest, James, continued to show he was willing to accept whatever the game presented to him in a complimentary role, calmly scoring just two points in the first half before finding some seams and some shots to get him into double figures scoring for the 1,296th-straight game.
Four games into this season, James is what the Lakers need him to be: one of three lasers, a power-changing machine on the glass and a voice on the defensive end.Not surprisingly, the Lakers won all four.
You could be forgiven for forgetting that the Lakers were even down in the fourth quarter, their control and poise making their eventual win inevitable given how well they've performed in tight situations this season.
After the win, the team's 14th of the season, the Lakers have the third-best winning percentage in the entire league, a standard of play established in the first half of the year and regularly achieved.
"I think the game plan discipline and game plan execution has been really good all season long and we're working hard to improve on that," head coach JJ Redick said of the team's habits.
"And then in denial, the organization and the execution is a lot better than last year. And our ability to understand what we're trying to do and we're trying to do it better."
Even with the team in the NBA Cup quarterfinals, and the Lakers having more to walk on Friday after winning their home game against the San Antonio Spurs in Game 6, it might all feel hummable.
"We've done a good job of solving problems in games when we have bad runs," Reaves said."Instead of falling apart, we come together and figure it out and that's what good teams do. You have to be able to solve problems on the fly. The coaching staff gets a lot of credit for that."
No, Friday never reached the height of the bitter rivalry game.Instead, it looked and felt like a great team handling its business against a worse team.
"It might have looked different as a spectator, but to me it was like a very simple game, guys who don't normally make threes, made some threes," Redick said. "We had too many turnovers in the first half. And in the second half, we stopped turning the ball over.
"Their guys kept it up for 3 hours until the end, basically, and we were able to stop it."
We have heard of such things.And if the public stays on track, we'll hear it that way.
