The Los Angeles Lakers, fuelled by a monster game from Anthony Davis, beat the upstart Indiana Pacers 123-109 to win the first edition of the NBA in-season tournament.
Davis scored 41 points and pulled down 20 rebounds in Las Vegas on Saturday while superstar LeBron James added 24 points and 11 rebounds for the 17-time NBA champion Lakers, who added their first NBA Cup to the club trophy case.
For James, it was a brand new accolade in the 21st season of a career that has included four NBA titles, the 38-year-old getting the nod as Most Valuable Player of the tournament.
Led by Davis and James, the Lakers outmuscled the Pacers, never letting them get their high-octane offence to fully fire.
They outscored the Pacers 86-44 in the paint and got the better of them on the boards 55-32.
“We know it’s not the real thing, but we keep taking steps in the right direction,” Davis said. “I think just our energy, our effort to start the game, our focus, was off the charts tonight.
“The first to do it, we’ll take it.”
The Lakers completed an unbeaten run through the tournament, which started with all 30 NBA teams drawn into six groups for round-robin play.
The Pacers came into the final unbeaten, having toppled the top two Eastern Conference Teams, Boston and Milwaukee, in the quarter-finals and semi-finals.
The Lakers beat the Phoenix Suns and crushed the New Orleans Pelicans in the knockout rounds.
The Lakers, backed by a partisan crowd at the T-Mobile Arena, led most of the game, but Indiana managed to keep it close until Los Angeles put together a 13-0 scoring run late in the fourth quarter to finally put the game away.
Davis added five assists and four blocked shots, even though he appeared to be hindered by discomfort in the hip or groin after a scramble in the second half.
The Lakers, thanks partly to 17 points and 11 rebounds from Davis, led 65-60 at halftime. Austin Reaves piled up 22 of his 28 points off the bench in the first half.
Los Angeles made just two of 13 three-point attempts, but their dominance inside meant it did not matter.
They held the Pacers, who came in averaging more than 128 points per game, to 36.8 per cent shooting.
Pacers star Tyrese Haliburton scored 20 points with 11 assists and three turnovers and Bennedict Mathurin added 20 points off the bench.
The Lakers pushed the lead to 11 three times in the third quarter but the Pacers, true to form, wouldn’t go away.
An alley-oop dunk by Davis, fed by James, put Los Angeles up 90-79 with 35.5 seconds left in the third. But the Pacers pounced on a James turnover with 2.8 seconds left in the period and Mathurin made a three-pointer that cut the Lakers’ lead to 90-82 heading into the final period.
A 7-2 run to start the fourth had the Pacers right back in it, but the Lakers just would not be denied.
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