Forget the nine-point final margin. This one wasn’t that close. The Wizards took the lead in the second quarter, ran it as high as 19 in the third, and were never seriously threatened by the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Lakers were missing Lebron James, and Anthony Davis was making just his third appearance after a 30-game absence due to a calf injury. Just as other teams romped on a COVID and injury-depleted Wizards team earlier in the season, Washington showed little mercy.

The driving force, as usual, was Russell Westbrook’s latest triple-double — 18 points, 18 rebounds, 14 assists. His shooting wasn’t exceptional, but he got two steals and committed just 2 turnovers. That’s elite production.

His backcourt running mate, Bradley Beal, had another efficient scoring night — 27 points on 11-18 shooting, including 3-5 from three.

All three centers — Alex Len, Robin Lopez and Daniel Gafford were productive in their minutes.

Ish Smith was excellent off the bench and even had his first dunk of the season (20th of his career).

Rui Hachimura had one his “Invisible Man” games where he did a little scoring on meh efficiency and managed just one rebound in 30 minutes.

Davis Bertans was 0-6 from three-point range and failed to score. It didn’t matter because his teammates picked up the slack on offense, and the Lakers bricked open threes (just 10-34 for the game).

Four Factors

Below are the four factors that decide who wins and loses in basketball — shooting (efg), rebounding (offensive rebounds), ball handling (turnovers), fouling (free throws made).

I’ve simplified them a bit. While the factors are usually presented as percentages, that’s more useful over a full season. In a single game, the raw numbers in each category are easier to understand.

PACE is possessions per 48 minutes.

Player Production Average

Below are Player Production Average (PPA) results from last night’s game. PPA is my overall production metric, which credits players for things they do that help a team win (scoring, rebounding, play-making, defending) and dings them for things that hurt (missed shots, turnovers, bad defense, fouls). PPA is a per possession stat that includes accounting for defense and role. In PPA, 100 is average and higher is better.

The table below is sorted by each player’s total contributions for the game.

POSS is the number of possessions each player was on the floor in this game.