|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
WASHINGTON (Ticker) -- Trying to get to 20 straight wins, the Los Angeles Lakers could not climb out of a 21-point hole. In one of the most surprising results of the season, the Lakers saw their league season-high 19-game winning streak come to an end with a 109-102 loss to the Washington Wizards. The Lakers came in with the third-longest winning streak in NBA history. Since a loss at San Antonio on February 1, they had won one less game than the woeful Wizards had won all season. Perhaps looking ahead to Sunday's nationally televised showdown with the Knicks in New York, the Lakers started slowly and never really recovered. They fell behind 62-41 with just under three minutes left in the second quarter. "The game was really in the finish," Lakers coach Phil Jackson said. "The first half was an aberration as far as I was concerned. We had a good dismantling in the first half. We dug too deep a hole for ourselves. As I told the players, you have to have a lot of luck to keep these things going, especially on the road." Powered by 40 points from Shaquille O'Neal and hot shooting by Glen Rice, Los Angeles fought back to an 85-85 tie with 7:53 to play. But the rally may have taken something out of the Lakers and they had no answer for Mitch Richmond, who scored 16 of his 32 points in the fourth quarter. "We kept our composure in the fourth," said Richmond, who made 15-of-16 free throws. "Even though they came back and tied it up, we kept our composure and came down and got a good shot or we got to the free-throw line. We just kept defending and kept playing hard." Los Angeles had a nine-game road winning streak snapped and blew a chance to tie the 1970-71 Milwaukee Bucks for the second-best winning streak in NBA history. The 1971-72 Lakers won 33 games in a row, the longest streak in pro sports. Both those teams won NBA championships. "A loss is a loss," O'Neal said. "It's kind of disappointing. We got off to a slow start, but we had a couple of opportunities to still win the game. We got back into it, but we just made some silly mistakes down the stretch. They beat us in the first half, and we beat ourselves in the second half." Juwan Howard scored 14 points and Rod Strickland handed out a season-high 16 assists for the Wizards, who snapped a three-game losing streak. Rice scored 22 points but All-Star Kobe Bryant was held to seven on 2-of-10 shooting for the Lakers. Bryant's game-opening dunk provided Los Angeles with its only lead. Trailing 82-73, the Lakers opened the fourth quarter with a 12-3 run, capped by Rice's 3-pointer that tied it. At that point, the sellout crowd of 20,674 at the MCI Center was chanting, "Let's Go Lakers!" But the Wizards, who have felt like a road team at home for much of this season, refused to buckle. With team president Michael Jordan in attendance for the first time since late February, the Wizards regrouped. Strickland's driving layup gave Washington an 87-85 lead and Richmond made a pair of 3-pointers around a layup by O'Neal for a 93-87 lead with 5:42 remaining. "I was feeling good," Richmond said. "I had a really good first quarter and my shot felt pretty good. In the second and third quarters, my teammates did an excellent job of picking up the slack. In the fourth quarter, I just wanted to be a little bit more aggressive." Richmond made a jumper for a 99-93 lead with 2:17 remaining and another to keep the advantage at 101-96 with 1:04 to go. O'Neal made two free throws with 49 seconds left. But when Richmond missed a jumper with 25 ticks left, Howard got the offensive rebound and Richmond drained a pair of free throws for a 103-98 lead with 17 seconds to play. O'Neal's layup again cut the deficit to three points but Chris Whitney answered with two free throws for a 105-100 lead with 13 seconds to go. Richmond added four free throws to seal it. "It's a great feeling to get a victory and to actually play a team like the Lakers like the way we did with the atmosphere of the whole arena like it was," Richmond said. "It definitely was an exciting win for us." Tracy Murray scored 12 points and Gerald King added 12 for the Wizards, who shot 50 percent (38-of-76) from the field and made 28-of-35 free throws. Robert Horry scored 12 points for the Lakers, who also shot 50 percent (37-of-74) but made just 23-of-32 foul shots. O'Neal was 15-of-25 from the field and 10-of-16 from the line. "Shaq got a lot of touches tonight, and we didn't double him but maybe five times the whole game," Wizards coach Darrell Walker said. "Shaq got 40 and we just tried to stay at home with Glen Rice and Kobe Bryant and try to eliminate the other guys." The Wizards led by as many as 18 points in the first quarter as Richmond recorded 10 points and Strickland seven assists. Murray's driving dunk gave Washington a 62-41 lead with 2:52 left in the second quarter.
|
