At last, LeBron James completed fewer minutes than his allotted!

The Los Angeles Lakers have advanced to the quarterfinals of the inaugural In-Season Tournament in the league!

Now that they have defeated their (extremely beatable) West Group A bracket opponent 4-0, LA will have home court advantage going into the In-Season Tournament playoffs.

All of this was accomplished by LA with its most commanding win of the year—a 131-99 thumping of the visiting Utah Jazz that ended before the half.

Even though Los Angeles has historically struggled in the first quarter, they dominated the first quarter tonight, winning 32–17.

The Lakers were quickly overwhelmed by all-NBA power forward LeBron James (10 points), standout center Anthony Davis (17 points, 10 rebounds), and point guard D’Angelo Russell (12 points in the half; he eventually had a strong game both as a scorer and distributor). Second-year shooting guard Max Christie played well in the first quarter after Cam Reddish sustained a groin injury that forced him out of the game permanently. Christie also showed some impressive two-way skills.

This LeBron James trey, which enabled the prolific forward to surpass the 39K mark in his NBA regular season career scoring record for the first time in league history, was arguably the most noteworthy event in LA’s first half:

Fans should not have worried that Los Angeles would let up in the third quarter and require another significant performance from 38-year-old James in a November game. This squad was playing cohesive basketball under Darvin Ham’s direction, mostly to assist James and Davis’s strong interior scoring. 

Even though the Jazz started the quarter with a 6-2 mini-run, James’ baseline drive into a dunk basically took Utah’s souls away.

Midway through the third quarter, two consecutive triples by Rui Hachimura, made while LeBron James was sitting, increased LA’s lead to 92-63 and effectively ended the game.

Darvin Ham chose a two-big lineup with James and Davis sitting out the whole fourth quarter. 

In true fashion, Christian Wood and Jaxson Hayes produced an absolute dunk fest. Austin Reaves had some smart, successful finishes and dishes of his own, but he also got a little too flamboyant for his own good at times, which resulted in some careless errors as both teams bided their time.

The entire game, Utah was unable to generate enough momentum to score baskets; in the end, they shot a horrendous 38.8% the field (including 25% from beyond the arc on 44 attempts), well below LA’s outstanding 57% (37.9%, though on a pitiful 29 attempts). During the fourth quarter, when both teams were resting important starters, the scoring drought became particularly severe. With their defensive anchor inside, starting center Walker Kessler, out for the sixth straight game due to an elbow sprain, the Jazz found it difficult to control Los Angeles on defense, particularly in the post.

With a team-high 26 points and 16 rebounds, Davis concluded the game. The only other player on the team to score more than 20 points was Russell, who scored 20 points on the spot while shooting 3-of-5 from the charity line, 7-of-9 from the floor, and 3-of-4 from deep. He notch eight dimes as well.

As far as we are aware, D-Lo is an offensive weapon from OSU that can be a bit trick-or-treat. His shot was dropping tonight, as seen by this note-perfect performance:

Beyond the fact that LA improved to 9-6 on the season with the victory, the even better long-term news is that only one Laker, starting small forward Taurean Prince, played longer than thirty minutes. Still modest, the 6’7″ swingman’s time was 30:34. LeBron James played just 24 minutes, giving his tired 38-year-old bones a much-needed break. He made 6-of-10 field goals (3-of-5 from deep, continuing his excellent year-long streak of long-range sniping), and 2-of-2 free throws to score 17 points in that span.

On December 4th or 5th, the Lakers will play in a single-game elimination contest that will be televised on TNT for the second time in their In-Season Tournament appearance.