The Sports Report: Lakers defeat Magic

Howdy, I’m your host, Houston Mitchell. Let’s get right to the news.

Dan Woike on the Lakers: The look shot across the Lakers defenders’ faces too many times. It was a mixture of annoyance and disbelief, of confusion and frustration. Someone wasn’t where they were supposed to be. And someone on the other team got an easy basket because of it.

Twenty miles southwest of the Amway Center, where the Lakers scrapped their way through a 114-103 win Monday, the team won a championship in their last trip to Orlando, Fla. It was a run defined by their chemistry and toughness, the Lakers’ ability to make the best of a bad situation better than anyone else.

It’s the recipe for repeating, and with just 11 games left on the schedule and a superstar still missing, no one can be sure whether the Lakers will be able to recapture their Orlando magic.

A season ago, it was partly born out of necessity. The Lakers had to navigate international controversy and unspeakable tragedy — and that was before the season shut down because of the coronavirus pandemic. Forced to live with one another on a closed campus for 100-plus days, the Lakers had to be connected.

But this year, injuries have kept the Lakers from being together on the floor (their likely starting five have yet to play a single minute together). And off the court, health and safety protocols have limited interactions, forcing the team to try and figure out ways to work well with one another.

Luckily, the basketball gods sometimes provide gifts like Monday, what should’ve been an easy win against the very bad, very young Magic quickly becoming a fight. The Lakers led by as many as 16 in the first half, but their defense cratered into itself, allowing Orlando to make 10 of 11 shots to start the second quarter.

But they didn’t completely crumble.

CLIPPERS

Andrew Greif on the Clippers: Only in hindsight did the Clippers’ last visit to New Orleans become a good memory.

Because in the moment, on March 14, nothing felt auspicious about a 20-point loss, coming off their uneven play leading into the NBA’s All-Star break. The Clippers’ biggest sin was the way they offered little resistance amid the rout.

“I just didn’t think we had the right mindset coming into the game,” coach Tyronn Lue said Monday in a pregame videoconference. “I think that was a wake-up call for us.”

In the five weeks since, the Clippers are an NBA-best 18-5 in part because of the events that took place that day in New Orleans. Serge Ibaka hurt his back; Ivica Zubac has started at center ever since and the team’s defensive turnaround has been attributed by several Clippers to Zubac’s increased role.

It also prompted Lue to replace starting forward Nicolas Batum with Marcus Morris in hopes of jump-starting Morris’ comfort as a scorer.

He’d made 50% of his three-point attempts since.

And yet they departed with a 120-103 loss that was just as one-sided as the one in March.

DODGERS

Jorge Castillo on the Dodgers: The voltage that pulsed through Dodger Stadium the previous four days was gone Monday. The San Diego Padres left town, replaced by the Cincinnati Reds, and the playoff ambiance that had sneaked into Chavez Ravine six months early exited with them.

It was time for the Dodgers to turn the page and recover from a draining four-game series loss to their brash rivals. A date with the Reds offered the first-place club a prime bounce-back chance. Cincinnati arrived on a seven-game losing streak with an offense sputtering as much as the Dodgers’ bats recently.

But the Reds used the meeting to rebound instead, beating the Dodgers 5-3 on Jesse Winker’s leadoff two-run home run against Kenley Jansen in the 10th inning.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts gave the ball to Jansen in the 10th after staying away from him in the team’s 11-inning loss to the Padres on Sunday. Roberts maintained the decision, made with the long season in mind, was the right one even though the club’s bullpen was short-handed. The Dodgers have been careful with their relievers this season, and they’ve been most careful with Jansen.

So Jansen entered Monday’s game in the 10th on one day of rest. But he still wasn’t sharp. His stuff didn’t pop. His velocity was slightly down. And Winker, with a runner at second base to start the inning, lifted his second pitch, a 92-mph sinker, just over the wall in left field for the go-ahead runs. It’s the only home run Jansen has surrendered this season in 10 1/3 innings.

Luke Raley struck out with runners on the corners in the bottom of the inning to seal the result, which dropped the Dodgers (15-8) into a first-place tie with the San Francisco Giants in the National League West. They’ve lost six of their last eight games.

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ANGELS

Jack Harris on the Angels: Making his third pitching start of the season at Globe Life Field against the Texas Rangers, Ohtani suffered the equivalent of a snap hook off the opening tee. In the first seven batters of the game, he issued two walks and a hit-by-pitch, yielded a three-run home run on a cutter he left in the zone and threw strikes on only six of 24 pitches as four runs crossed the plate.

Pitching coach Matt Wise was forced to visit the mound. The Angels bullpen began to stir. After getting only one out, his outing was on the brink of disaster.

Ohtani escaped the frame without allowing another run. Playing both ways for the second time in his Major League Baseball career, he helped his offense pull even the next half-inning, lining a two-run double to right before later racing home to tie the score.

When he returned to the mound in the second, he felt he’d been given a “fresh start,” he said through his interpreter. “I treated it like it was a brand-new ballgame.”

And from then on, Ohtani produced some of his most dominant stuff yet, silencing the Rangers the rest of the way in the Angels’ eventual 9-4 win.

“If you weren’t entertained by watching him tonight,” Maddon said, “you can’t be entertained by watching a game of baseball.”

Ohtani finished his five-inning outing retiring 14 of his last 15 batters, including nine via strikeout. Of his final 51 pitches, only 17 missed the zone. He reestablished control of his high-90s-mph fastball, regained the feel for his devastating splitter and rang up a couple of batters with knee-buckling sliders.

KINGS vs. DUCKS

Sean Walker and Mikey Anderson scored, Jonathan Quick made 21 saves and the Kings defeated the Ducks 4-1 on Monday night.

Dustin Brown and Trevor Moore added empty-net goals for the Kings, who are six points behind St. Louis in the race for the final playoff spot in the West Division.

“Our D is our key for us all over the ice, and when they score, that puts a little pressure on the forwards as well and we got to be on our toes and be in front of net so they can shoot it more,“ Kings forward Adrian Kempe said. “It was nice to see them score tonight and nice to get the ‘W’ as well.”

Jamie Drysdale scored for the Ducks, who have five goals during a five-game losing streak. Anthony Stolarz made 21 saves.

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THIS DATE IN SPORTS

1956 — Rocky Marciano retires as the undefeated heavyweight boxing champion. He finished with a 49-0 record, including six title defenses and 43 knockouts.

1960 — The Minneapolis Lakers announce they will relocate to Los Angeles.

1968 — Jimmy Ellis wins the heavyweight boxing title with a 15-round decision over Jerry Quarry in Oakland, Calif. This is the final bout of an eight-man elimination tournament to fill Muhammad Ali’s vacated title.

1994 — Scott Erickson, who allowed the most hits in the majors the previous season, pitches Minnesota’s first no-hitter in 27 years and the Twins beat Milwaukee 6-0.

1994 — Dave Hannan scores 5:43 into the fourth overtime to keep the Buffalo Sabres going in the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the New Jersey Devils, the sixth-longest game in NHL history.

2002 — Derek Lowe pitches a no-hitter against Tampa Bay. Brent Abernathy is the only baserunner Lowe allows in Boston’s 10-0 victory.

2003 — Kevin Millwood pitches his first career no-hitter to lead the Philadelphia Phillies over the San Francisco Giants 1-0.

2007 — Kirk Radomski, a former New York Mets clubhouse employee, pleads guilty to distributing steroids to major league players for a decade and agrees to help baseball’s steroids investigators.

2008 — Ashley Force becomes the first woman to win a national Funny Car race. The 25-year-old beats her father, drag racing icon John Force, in the final round of the 28th annual Summit Racing Equipment Southern Nationals to deny him his 1,000th winning round in his 500th NHRA tour event.

2009 — The Denver Nuggets match the biggest victory in playoff history with their 121-63 rout of New Orleans in Game 4 of their first-round series. The Minneapolis Lakers had the other 58-point postseason victory, beating the St. Louis Hawks 133-75 in 1956.

2011 — Nathan Horton scores 5:43 into overtime to give the Boston Bruins a 4-3 victory over the Montreal Canadiens in Game 7 of their first-round playoff series. Boston had never won a playoff series after trailing 0-2 in 26 tries.

2011 — Dwayne Roloson makes 36 saves and Tampa Bay completes a big series comeback and eliminates Pittsburgh with a 1-0 win in Game 7. Roloson becomes the second goalie to go 6-0 in elimination games. He allowed only four goals in winning the final three games as the Lightning erased a 3-1 series deficit.

2013 — The Detroit Red Wings make the playoffs for the 22nd straight season after Henrik Zetterberg had two goals and an assist in a 3-0 victory over Dallas. The Red Wings own the longest active playoff streak in major professional sports, six years longer than the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs’ stretch of postseason play.

2014 — Three-time Olympic champion Kerri Walsh wins her record 47th FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour title, teaming with April Ross to beat Brazil’s Juliana Felisberta Silva and Maria Antonelli in the Fuzhou Open final.

2014 — Lydia Ko, three days after her 17th birthday, birdies the final hole for her third LPGA Tour victory and first as a professional, holding off Stacy Lewis and Jenny Shin in the inaugural Swinging Skirts LPGA Classic.

2017 — Texas A&M defensive end Myles Garrett is picked first overall by the Cleveland Browns in the NFL draft. Chicago sends a third-round pick, a fourth and a 2018 third to San Francisco to switch and selects quarterback Mitchell Trubisky, who started only 13 games for North Carolina. The 49ers take defensive end Solomon Thomas from just down the road at Stanford.

And finally

Ashley Force becomes the first woman to win a National Funny Car final. Watch it here.