LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — It took three days longer to close the series than the Lakers expected, and for three-and-a-half quarters, the Trail Blazers kept hope alive that it would take more.
But that very faint flame was extinguished by a cruising Anthony Davis, driving into a clear lane in transition on the other end of a LeBron James bounce pass late in the fourth quarter. Before the series started, Portland’s chief challenge was to stop him. They never were able to.
So the Lakers advanced, but not without effort. A 131-122 Game 5 victory didn’t inspire the kind of confidence a championship contender should. But days after acknowledging that closeout games are the hardest to win, James didn’t let the Lakers miss the opportunity: He scored 36 points in a triple-double, and helped feed Davis’ 43.
The superstar duo bested the Trail Blazers who had only one half their pair. James and Davis combined to go for 28 for 37 from the field.
It happened after tense days of off-court drama following the protest of the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday, hours before the Lakers were supposed to tip this Game 5. James acknowledged he was frustrated in the immediate aftermath of the strike that he had been thrust into a situation without a longterm plan. Of leaving the bubble, he admitted, “It probably crossed my mind, sure,” but claimed it wasn’t because of the strike.
“From a fan’s perspective and from a basketball junkie, it’s the best thing that you could ever ask for, basketball games over and over and over and over and over,” he said. “When you’re trying to create change, you can’t lose sight of what the main thing is and why we came out here.”
But he took care of business off the court, becoming a key figure in the player-driven effort to get owners to turn arenas into voting sites and form a social justice coalition. Then Saturday, he took care of business on it.
The Lakers clinched their first playoff series win since 2012, in a first-round bout with the Denver Nuggets. In the gulf between lies the worst stretch in franchise history, including six years without any postseason at all. But topping the Blazers was a needed first step in starting to restore some shine to the Lakers organization after those days in the wilderness — and bring them a step closer to its first title since 2010. Their second round opponent will be either the Houston Rockets or Oklahoma City Thunder (Houston has a 3-2 lead).
But for much of the slog-fest on Monday night, the Lakers hardly looked like a team worthy of those ambitions. It was the only game of the series that the Lakers didn’t have to deal with Damian Lillard, who left the bubble in the last week after suffering a right knee sprain in Game 4. But the Blazers, undeterred, donned black head bands as they faced their elimination, and played with a sense of desperation that the Lakers had predicted but not prepared for.
C.J. McCollum was persistent enough for two, both charging into the paint and knocking down jumpers. The Lakers’ defensive scheme that had contained the best of him seemed broken down and possibly the best player in the West to never be an All-Star rained down 36 points in response.
He found a rejuvenated Carmelo Anthony as a willing backcourt mate: He had 27 points, finding particular relish in match-ups with James, his fellow 2003 draft partner and close friend.
“They didn’t get this far to just give up. And we knew that,” Davis said. “And closeout games are already tough. But just tried to keep fighting.”
Days of contention and negotiation during league-wide protest were restorative to the players’ messages of social justice, but were also exhausting. Both the Lakers and Trail Blazers had players at the forefront of the NBPA in discussions to advance certain social justice causes, and both Danny Green and McCollum spoke on Friday of getting little to no sleep. Coaches had attempted to keep scheming simple — Frank Vogel said in his practices for Game 5, he merely wanted to give his players a chance to run up and down the floor.
The lag in focus was especially apparent as the teams took more than four minutes in real time to play out the final 1.1 seconds of the first quarter — J.R. Smith accidentally caused a turnover by taking an inbounds pass while he was out of bounds.
That seemed to change at the start of the third quarter, as Davis and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope stepped up, helping rip off a 13-0 run to gain a modest separation from their short-handed opponents. It was in this period that Davis found the most assertive version of himself that helped turn the series after a 0-1 start: He ripped a rebound out of Mario Hezonja’s hands underneath the basket before rising up for a slam.
As the Lakers left the court with the win, James seemed to finally unbutton from his drama-filled week. He went over to Anthony, who he now boasts a 8-2 record against in playoff games, and gave him a hug and a few words. Then he waited for Davis near the corner of the arena, salsa dancing to “Smooth Operator” before shuffling out the door.
“That’s what you do when you close out a series,” James said to a laughing Davis. “You let that (expletive) out now.”
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LeBron James, Anthony Davis dazzle as Lakers top Trail Blazers in first-round series - OCRegister
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