The Los Angeles Lakers stunned the Boston Celtics with a remarkable win on Thursday night.
The Lakers won 117-96 behind 24 points from Anthony Davis, 23 from Austin Reeves, and 20 points and 14 rebounds from LeBron James.
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The win over the Celtics moved the Lakers to 24-18 and fifth place in the NBA's Western Conference.
Davis, who enjoyed a dominant defensive performance, believes the team is “there” but a long way from being true contenders.
“I think we need another top team,” he told ESPN.
“I feel like I was always at my best when I was four years old, and I have a great opportunity there.”
Davis pointed to the 2020 championship team as having those big personalities and how they took advantage of that.
“We knew it worked when we won a championship with JaVale [McGee] And Dwight [Howard] She is five and I am four
“We feel like we're right there, you know, as far as the team and everything like that.
“[LeBron] “I'm very excited to win another championship.”
He then added: “I think our front office is clearly working.
“Rob has been working on trying to improve the team. But for us, it's about going out there and playing.
“Whether something happens or not, we have to go out and compete with whatever is in the locker room, just like we did tonight.
“We're going to do something [road] a trip.
“I'm not sure what's going to happen I know [Rob] Always works on phones and things like that.
“But ultimately, we can't try to wait for anything.
“We have to go out and compete and do what we have to do to win basketball games.”
New rights deal
The NBA has signed an 11-year contract with three networks for the rights to the league starting in the 2025-26 season.
There will be no games on TNT for the first time since the network launched in 1988.
The Walt Disney Company will continue to show the league with 80 regular season games on ESPN and ABC.
They will also feature approximately 18 first- and second-round playoff games, conference finals series for 10 of their 11 years, and will remain the home of the NBA Finals.
NBC will return as NBA broadcaster for the first time since 2002.
The network will show up to 100 games per season across its channels and Peacock streaming service.
It will also be home to the NBA All-Star and showcase approximately 28 first- and second-round playoff games.
NBC will show one conference finals series for six of the 11 years, alternating with new broadcaster Amazon Prime.
Amazon will show 66 NBA regular season games, including Black Friday.
The streaming service is also home to the final stages of the NBA Cup and the entire Play-In Championship.
Prime will also broadcast about a third of the first- and second-round playoff games.
LeBron enjoyed one of his most complete performances of the season, not only leading the team offensively, but also returning to his best defensively and crashing the boards.
“Be physical defensively, share the ball offensively. Communicate.
“I don’t think it’s even about Boston, Boston knows who they are.
“We are still learning and trying to get better at what we want to do.
“We will have a game plan for such a great team, but they are in a different place than we are.”
Asked if they were ready to compete at this level all the time, LeBron said: “No, that's not the way our team is built.
“We have no room for error – for a lot of mistakes… we have no choice.
“I mean this is the way our team is built. We have to play close to perfect basketball.
“We know the game is never perfect, and it's never going to be a perfect 48-minute basketball game.”
