LOS ANGELES — Sorry, Desmond Bane. Despite your guarantee, there won’t be a Game 7 in Memphis.
Sincerest apologies, Dillon Brooks. You’re wrong. LeBron James is apparently not too old.
The Lakers disposed of the trash-talking Memphis Grizzlies with a laughably easy 125-85 victory Friday to abruptly end the first-round playoff series, 4-2, at Crypto.com Arena. The Lakers open the second round Tuesday at Golden State or Sacramento.
How badly were the Grizzlies embarrassed? The 40-point loss was the largest ever for a second-seeded team against a seventh-seeded team.
The Lakers led by 36 in the third quarter — yes, the third quarter — and it somehow got worse from there.
This was the same Lakers team that started out 2-10 this season and tumbled down to an 80-1 longshot to win the NBA championship. Now they’re one of eight teams advancing to the next round.
Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell uncorked the most important night of his career, scoring 31 points on 12-for-17 shooting, a notable U-turn for a player who shot only 36.8% in the series before Friday.
LeBron James, all 38 years of him, was coldly efficient after a rough shooting night in Game 5. James had 22 points on commendable nine-for-13 shooting.
And is it too late to re-open voting for Defensive Player of the Year? Memphis center Jaren Jackson Jr. won the regular-season award, of course, but Davis thoroughly outplayed him this series.
Davis had 26 blocked shots in the six games, including five Friday, while Jackson had only 12. It was an impressive series for Davis, especially on the defensive end.
“I think we all know, the world knows, the basketball guys know, the competition knows how dominant AD is defensively,” James said. “He was spectacular.”
The Lakers, after refusing to get involved in a war of words with the younger, brasher Grizzlies, reveled in the victory.
Davis saved a loose ball from going out of bounds in the third quarter, stopped in front of the Lakers’ bench and euphorically called for cheers from the delirious crowd. He received them, obviously.
“We tried not to get in a back-and-forth with those guys,” Davis said. “If you say nothing back, they’re just going to kind of stop. I think that’s what happened with Dillon Brooks.”
Brooks, the Grizzlies forward, shot a minuscule 31% in the series, failing to back up any of his bluster. Before the series, Brooks said he couldn’t wait to eliminate the Lakers. After Game 2, he called James “old” and said he wouldn’t respect the NBA’s all-time leading scorer unless James scored 40 points against him.
Bane, a Grizzlies guard, also experienced a bad case of hyperbole gone askew after guaranteeing there would be another game Sunday. That won’t be happening, unless Bane was referring to an intra-squad scrimmage with his teammates. Bane, for the record, made only five of 16 shots in Game 6.
The Lakers stormed past the Grizzlies from the start, taking a 59-42 halftime lead and never looking back. The Lakers had eight blocked shots in the half, received 14 points from Russell and also got 16 from James, including an aggressive reverse dunk toward the end of the second quarter.
“It was definitely a Game 7 mentality for us,” James said. “Even when we made mistakes, we brushed it off right away and moved on to the next play.”
Perhaps Russell said it best after the Lakers beat the, shall we say, overly confident Grizzlies.
“Good, come to good,” he told Spectrum SportsNet.