On Friday night, the Los Angeles Lakers came into Madison Square Garden to face the New York Knicks in the fourth game of a seven-game road trip. Even though there have been a lot of trade rumors surrounding the two-time defending champs involving Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets, the Lakers have stepped up their game as of late with three straight wins coming into their showdown with the Knicks.
Not only have the defending champs seemingly gotten back to form, but they were coming off perhaps their biggest win of the season beating the arch rival Boston Celtics on their home floor at the Garden. Despite getting the best of the Celtics and being flawless on this road trip thus far (3-0), the consensus was that the Lakers were coming off an emotional win in Boston and might come out flat against the Knicks.
Unfortunately for the Knicks, that wasn't the case as Kobe Bryant put on another show at Madison Square Garden. Just two years ago, the Black Mamba came into MSG and made history scoring 61 points. With a 61-point game, Kobe surpassed both Michael Jordan (55 points) and Bernard King (60 points) to set the scoring record at Madison Square Garden.
Ever since that historic performance back in 2009, Kobe Bryant always gets a lot of attention when he is set to play at MSG and Friday night was no different. Although scoring 60+ was a stretch, Kobe was on fire against the Knicks as he scored a game-high 33 points in three quarters as he sat out the entire fourth quarter. With 19 points in the first quarter alone, Kobe set the tone and really started frustrating the Knicks on defense as they just had no answer for the five-time NBA champion.
Even though Kobe was stealing all the headlines with yet another dominant performance at Madison Square Garden, his teammates really started to step it up with both Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum having solid performances. Gasol finished with 20 points and six rebounds while Bynum added 12 points and nine boards.
Lamar Odom and Shannon Brown were solid contributors off the bench with 26 points combined. The highlight that stole the show in this game was Shannon Brown's spectacular alley-oop slam assisted by Steve Blake. Check out highlights from the game and Shannon's dunk in the video on the left-hand side of this post.
Needless to say, the Lakers cruise to a 113-96 and have gotten off to a great start on this road trip with four straight wins. The will have their work cut out for them once again though as they will now head to Orlando to take on Dwight Howard and the Magic.
Lamar Odom and Shannon Brown also were solid contributors off the bench with 26 points combined. The highlight that stole the show in this game was Shannon Brown's unbelievable alley-oop from Steve Blake.
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