LeBron James scored 28 points and dished 12 assists to become the fourth player in NBA history to top 12,000 in a career, leading the Los Angeles Lakers to a convincing 101-73 victory over the visiting Phoenix Suns on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Luke Kennard added 19 points in the victory that assured Los Angeles (52-29) will finish no lower than fourth place in the Western Conference and have homecourt advantage in a first-round playoff series.<\/p>\n
The Lakers remain one game behind the third-place Denver Nuggets (53-28) with one game to play, and Los Angeles owns the tiebreaker edge.<\/p>\n
Dillon Brooks scored 12 points and reserve Royce O\u2019Neale added 11 for the Suns (44-37), who were without star Devin Booker (ankle). Phoenix scored just 25 second-half points in a contest that meant nothing after it previously locked up the No. 7 spot in the West and a home play-in game.<\/p>\n
The Suns\u2019 Grayson Allen exited in the second quarter due to a left hamstring injury and didn\u2019t return. He had eight points in 13 minutes.<\/p>\n
Assist No. 12,000 came less than five minutes into the game when James collected a rebound on the defensive end and threw a long chest pass to the other end. Deandre Ayton caught the ball over the smaller Collin Gillespie and put it in the hoop.<\/p>\n
That was James\u2019 second assist of the contest. At the game\u2019s end, James\u2019 total sat at 12,010.<\/p>\n
Former Utah Jazz star John Stockton is the all-time leader with 15,806 career assists. Recently retired Chris Paul (12,552) is second and Jason Kidd (12,091) stands third.<\/p>\n
Rui Hachimura added 13 points and Ayton scored 10 for the Lakers, who shot 50.7% from the field and were 8 of 20 (40%) from 3-point range.<\/p>\n
James had 14 points and five assists in the first quarter. Los Angeles led 30-14 late in the period before the Suns went on a 22-5 burst and took a 36-35 lead in the second quarter on a 3-pointer by O\u2019Neale.<\/p>\n
The Lakers recovered to lead 57-48 at halftime. James had 22 points and Kennard added 17 in the half.<\/p>\n
Late in the third quarter, James scored on a layup to push the lead to 17. Then he stole the ball and cruised uncontested for a ferocious dunk that made it 79-60 with 1:12 left in the period.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles held an 81-64 edge entering the fourth quarter and led by as many as 29 as Phoenix managed just nine final-quarter points on 4-of-21 shooting (19%).<\/p>\n
The Suns committed 24 turnovers and shot just 33.8%, including a shaky 7 of 40 (17.5%) from behind the arc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James scored 28 points and dished 12 assists to become the fourth player in NBA history to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,4033,4043,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-707946","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-lakers","11":"tag-lakers","12":"tag-lalakers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-losangeleslakers","17":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116384504637372993","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}