The Lakers win! Following the close loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Sunday, the Lakers bounced back and beat the Washington Wizards in overtime. The offense for both teams throughout was not overly exciting, but the game ended in a whirlwind of big plays. The Lakers lost this type of game on Sunday, but tonight was different. They had the same good looks, but this time the Lakers made the plays they needed to.

The Lakers are now 2-2 and the team appears to be fun again. That’s all you can ask for after the opening night loss led many to believe they could be 0-4 and dejected to start the season. Here are my thoughts on the win and what it means.

Ball vs. Wall

Despite Gortat’s tweet, John Wall did not do much torturing in the first half. He only had six points on three-of-eight shooting to go along with three assists and one rebound. Not only was he very quiet in the first half, Lonzo Ball actually stripped him twice for two steals. Despite that, Ball did not do much either. In the first half he had zero points, three assists, and four rebounds.

The rest of the game went the same as the first half. Wall finished with 18 points and nine assists, but on 7-22 shooting. His shooting was terrible and he missed the potential tying three at the end of the game. Ball had a bad shooting night as well, finishing just two-of-11. Despite his shooting struggles, Ball still stuffed the boxscore with eight rebounds and ten assists.

Maybe John Wall has a different meaning of “No mercy” because he sure didn’t do much. Lavar Ball was right. Lonzo doesn’t lose two times in a week.

Ingram bounced back

After a bad game against New Orleans in which he scored seven points on 3-9 shooting, Brandon Ingram bounced back in a big way. He scored 19 points, grabbed 10 rebounds, three assists and he had a steal and a block. Not only was he extremely productive, but he scored the game-tying basket with 0.7 seconds left. There was ice in his veins tonight.

Ingram so far has had two bad games and two good games and for a player who was 19 just last month, that’s going to happen a lot. He’s going to have bad games and he’s going to have good games and today was a good game. It’s not fair to give up on young players so early and he sure is making people look dumb.

The Lakers are competing

The Lakers went back and forth with the Wizards tonight. The Wizards never held a large lead and the Lakers kept battling the entire game. This kept on going until the final seconds when the Lakers had the ball with 10 seconds on the clock. Ingram proceeded to make the game tying shot to send the game to overtime.

Once the extra session started, it was all defense. The Lakers defense stuffed the Wizards and at the helm of it was Julius Randle. He was switching everywhere and swarming everything. It seemed like he blocked the entire wizards team at least twice. Despite being in the dog house the last couple of games, Randle was the embodiment of the team tonight. Kudos to him.