LeBron James catches fire, leads Lakers to bounceback win over Nets

Behind LeBron James tying his career high with nine 3-pointers, the Lakers picked up a comfortable win in Brooklyn.

An early onslaught by the Lakers and a brilliant close from LeBron James saw the Lakers bounce back with a 116-104 victory over the Nets.

LeBron James tied his career high for 3-pointers with nine as part of his 40-point performance. He finished 13-17 from the field and 9-10 from the 3-point line.

Anthony Davis added 24 points and 14 rebounds while Rui Hachimura had 20 points, 10 rebounds and four assists. D’Angelo Russell had 18 points, six rebounds, six assists and four steals. Austin Reaves chipped in 12 points, seven rebounds, six assists and one steal.

Both turnovers (19) and bench scoring plagued the Lakers. Prior to garbage time, the Lakers had just two bench points, those coming from Gabe Vincent in his return from injury.

The Lakers could not have asked for a better start, scoring the first 15 points of the game and forcing a pair of early Nets timeouts. Every Lakers starter sans D’Lo scored in the run, though the point guard had a pair of assists.

By the time they scored their first basket at the 5:40 mark, the Lakers led 17-2. AD responded with seven straight points as the lead reached 24-4.

The Lakers downshifted the remainder of the quarter but still kept their sizeable lead to close the quarter, heading into the second up 31-11. The 11 points were the fewest allowed in a quarter this season.

As they’ve been prone to do this season, the Lakers let their foot off the gas. Brooklyn hit 101 of its first 12 shots of the second period and a lead that was as high as 24 points was halved to 12.

The Lakers did respond and did not allow the lead to dip any lower than that. A huge lob from LeBron to AD late in the second quarter restored the margin back to 17 points.

Out of the timeout, D’Lo, who surpassed 10,000 career points on the day, knocked down a 3-pointer as the margin reached 20 points again. In a move completely out of character, the Lakers finished the second quarter strong and extended their lead to 67-44 heading into the locker room.

D’Lo and Reaves helped the Lakers get off to a hot start in the third quarter as the lead reached its largest at 26 points following back-to-back buckets from them. Again, Brooklyn made a bit of a run to pull back within 19 points at 77-58, forcing a Lakers timeout.

The lead still hovered around 15-18 points throughout the remainder of the period with the Lakers cruising comfortably through the second half. The two sides got pretty sloppy with plenty of turnovers in the final minutes of the period.

Much more in tune with their work this season, the Lakers had an abysmal finish to the third quarter and Brooklyn cut it all the way to 90-79 to end the period. The Nets outscored the Lakers 35-23 in the third period with the purple and gold committing 10 turnovers in the quarter.

Cam Thomas, who was the catalyst for the third-quarter run, hit a 3-pointer to open the fourth quarter and made it a single-digit game. LeBron responded with his own long-range effort, but the game was on at that point.

A fully engaged LeBron, though, quickly became a hard man to stop.

LeBron tied his career high with nine 3-pointers after back-to-back makes in the fourth quarter, giving him 40 points. A handful of stops down the stretch and just enough scoring led to the benches emptying and the Lakers winning comfortably in the end.

Key Takeaways:

LeBron really was feeling himself on Sunday. He only missed four shots, one of those being a 3-pointer, and was incredible all game long. Heat check LeBron 3-pointers just hit different.

Vincent looked decent in his return. Getting 14 minutes out of him was nice and he was a good second ballhandler to have.

Holy moly the bench scoring, though. TWO points!?!? Egregiously bad. The bench finished this game 1-12 from the field and 0-8 from the 3-point line.

The next game is on Tuesday in Toronto with tip scheduled for 7 p.m.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.