LOS ANGELES: Luka Doncic recorded 39 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, and the Los Angeles Lakers clinched the Western Conference\u2019s No. 3 seed with a solid 140-109 victory over the visiting Houston Rockets on Friday night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
LeBron James had 14 points and eight assists in 22 minutes before sitting out the final 19:27 with an apparent injury. James, who has been bothered by a left groin injury, grimaced just before being pulled in the third quarter and had his left leg\/hip area taped but the team didn\u2019t immediately announce an ailment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Austin Reaves contributed 23 points, seven rebounds and six assists, and Dorian Finney-Smith added 18 points on six 3-pointers off the bench for the Lakers (50-31). Finney-Smith matched his season best for treys, previously achieved against Houston on March 31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rui Hachimura scored 16 points for Los Angeles, which shot 60.9 percent from the field and made 19 of 37 3-point attempts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cam Whitmore established career highs of 34 points and seven 3-pointers for the Rockets (52-28), who held out several players for the second straight game. Reed Sheppard scored 14 points, Nate Williams added 12 and Aaron Holiday tallied 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Houston previously clinched the No. 2 seed and on Friday held out Dillon Brooks (rest), Tari Easton (left leg), Alperen Sengun (personal reasons), Jabari Smith Jr. (left groin), Amen Thompson (rest) and Fred VanVleet (right ankle).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jalen Green scored seven points in nearly 15 first-half minutes before watching the second half in street clothes. Green is bidding to play in all 82 regular-season games for the second straight campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Houston shot 45.6 percent from the field, including 18 of 51 from 3-point range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doncic scored 24 points in the first half, when the Lakers shot 65.9 percent from the field while taking a 78-56 advantage. Whitmore had 13 in the half for Houston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Los Angeles led 38-32 after the first quarter and continued its strong play in the second and took a 65-44 lead on Finney-Smith\u2019s trey with 4:54 remaining. Hachimura drained a 3-pointer with 11 seconds left for the 22-point halftime bulge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Lakers continued to possess control in the third quarter. Doncic made three free throws with 0.1 seconds left to give Los Angeles a 107-87 lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jarred Vanderbilt\u2019s dunk made it 121-98 with 6:22 remaining in the half, leaving the only suspense to involve Bronny James. He entered with 4:23 to play and made his only 3-point attempt but missed his other three shots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOS ANGELES: Luka Doncic recorded 39 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, and the Los Angeles Lakers clinched the Western Conference\u2019s No. 3 seed with a solid 140-109 victory over the visiting Houston Rockets on Friday night. LeBron James had 14 points and eight assists in 22 minutes before sitting out the final 19:27 with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3818,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","inline_featured_image":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_3859443944190656_798604363342440":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3819,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3817\/revisions\/3819"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakjazbo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}