NBA Selecciones
LAL

115

7-7
Final
DAL

89

7-7
CronicaNumeritos
1 2 3 4 T
LAL 36 29 24 26 115
DAL 23 15 27 24 89
American Airlines Center, Dallas
Associated Press 11y

Lakers start hot, cruise to victory against Mavericks

DALLAS -- The Los Angeles Lakers have scoring beyond Kobe Bryant in Mike D'Antoni's offense. Not so much for the Dallas Mavericks when O.J. Mayo is a bit off, at least until Dirk Nowitzki gets back.

Metta World Peace hit three quick 3-pointers to spark a Los Angeles barrage from long range, and the Lakers scored 36 points before Bryant took his first shot in a 115-89 blowout of the Mavericks on Saturday night.

Once he started shooting, Bryant, the league's leading scorer, ended up joining World Peace among three Lakers with 19 points, and Los Angeles avoided its first 0-5 road start in nearly 20 years by scoring 100 points for the first time in four games under its hobbled coach.

"Metta played great. There was no reason not to," said D'Antoni, now 2-2 since joining the Los Angeles bench after knee-replacement surgery. "The force that we had rolling, and the way the ball moves, he'll get it and he should get 10 3s a night."

Mayo didn't get any 3-pointers on this night, going 0 for 5 despite coming in as the league leader with 42 from long range. Harassed by tough defense from Bryant, he scored 13 points -- nine below his average -- and even missed the rim on a finger-roll layup attempt while starting 1 of 7 from the field.

"Oh, man, terrific defense," Mayo said. "But a lot of them were missed open shots."

The Lakers don't expect their offense to find a high gear until Steve Nash returns from a leg injury, but they didn't need him against his old team, which will be missing his old running buddy, Nowitzki, for about another month at least.

Really, the Lakers didn't even need Bryant a night after he scored the final 14 Los Angeles points in a loss at Memphis. He hit his first shot early in the second quarter to put the Lakers up 41-23, and he made it a 20-point game on another bucket with 8:54 left in the half.

For good measure, Bryant hit a 3-pointer with 1.9 seconds left in the second quarter to give Los Angeles a 65-38 halftime lead.

Antawn Jamison was the other Los Angeles player with 19 points, and he had 15 rebounds to help the Lakers finish 2-2 in a stretch of four games in five nights and answer a surprising season-opening loss to the Mavericks that triggered a 1-4 start and the firing of coach Mike Brown.

"We have a lot of weapons offensively," Jamison said. "We've got to utilize that, and we weren't before this. We moved the ball the way we needed to."

World Peace scored the first 10 Los Angeles points and finished the first quarter with 16, finally missing his first shot on a 3-pointer just before the buzzer. He was 6 of 7 from the floor, including 4 of 5 from long range. The first points from someone else came on an alley-oop dunk by Dwight Howard from Bryant.

World Peace didn't score again until another 3-pointer in the fourth quarter, but other Lakers got into the long-range act. They made 8 of 10 from 3-point range and shot 59 percent overall before halftime. Jodie Meeks hit a pair of 3-pointers, and Bryant and Jamison had the others as the Mavericks gave up a season high in points for a half and a game.

"I thought (World Peace) was the one who got them going," Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. "It put them in a really tough mode defensively, and we didn't execute well against them."

Howard, coming off consecutive seven-point games, scored 15 points. He had just two blocks, but altered several other shots from driving Dallas guards in helping hold the Mavericks to 38 percent shooting in the decisive first half. Dallas shot 37 percent for the game.

Brandan Wright was the leading scorer for the Mavericks until the 7:40 mark of the second quarter after playing just 22 minutes total the previous five games. He didn't play at all in two of those games. He scored six of the first eight Dallas points on a pair of jumpers and a follow-up dunk.

Vince Carter, appearing in his 1,000th game, led the Mavericks with seven at halftime, and finished with a team-high 16 after hitting three 3-pointers in a meaningless second half as the Mavericks fell back to .500 in their 14th game without Nowitzki.

"We know he's not going to be back for a while," Carlisle said. "When we were 4-1, it wasn't a problem. We've got enough here to win games provided that everyone is doing their job, and tonight we didn't do it."

A night after sitting the entire fourth quarter at Memphis, Pau Gasol had 13 points and nine rebounds for the Lakers.

Rookie Jae Crowder scored 15 for Dallas, but 13 came with the outcome decided.

Game notes
Carter has made 947 starts among the 1,000 games in his 15-year career. Nowitzki played his 1,000th game for Dallas last season. Carter has played 75 games in Dallas with 40 starts. Jamison played in his 999th game Saturday night. ... The 0-4 road start for the Lakers was their worst since 1995, when they finally won in the fifth game at Sacramento. They lost their first six on the road to start the 1993-94 season. ... The Mavericks gave up a season high in points. The previous high came in a 113-94 loss at Utah.

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