The Los Angeles Lakers have won 24 consecutive best-of-seven playoff series after winning Game 1, a stat that doesn’t bode particularly well for the Memphis Grizzlies after their Austin Reaves-inflicted Sunday defeat. Unsurprisingly, it’s the longest such streak in the league.
The streak harks all the way back to the 1990-91 NBA season, in which a Lakers side led by Magic Johnson lost to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the NBA Finals. They won the opening game of that series by two points, before being comprehensively beaten over the next four games.
The current incarnation of the Lakers beat the Grizzlies in Memphis in a tight opening game of their 2022-23 playoffs, with a well-balanced team performance leading to the victory. Rui Hachimura was electric off the bench with 29 points, Anthony Davis had 22 points to go with 12 boards and a huge seven blocks, LeBron James put together a 21-11-5-2-3 statline, while Austin Reaves took over late with 14 last quarter points to end with 23 total.
Meanwhile, the Grizzlies lost Ja Morant to a nasty looking hand injury partway through the last quarter. Given that they were four points down at that point and went on to lose by 16, it’s clear that they can ill-afford to lose their star point guard if they’re to break the Lakers’ incredible streak.
Of course, past numbers don’t necessarily mean a great deal in the context of this individual series, and there is still plenty of work to do for the Lakers to advance through to the second round of the playoffs. The stats do, however, point to how difficult it is to come back even from a one-game deficit, and after the Lakers were able to get the win in Game 1 without a huge offensive load being placed on LeBron James and Anthony Davis, they have plenty of reason to be optimistic about the rest of the series.
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