Los Angeles Lakers 104 vs. 121 Brooklyn Nets summary: stats and ...

The Brooklyn Nets continued to climb the Eastern Conference standings with a win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday night. Kyrie Irving led all scorers with 26 points in the 121-104 victory at the Barclays Center.

It was a game that was supposed to be headlined by some of the games biggest names, but injuries and fatigue made for a matchup that lacked considerable star power. Kevin Durant is still nursing his sprained knee back to health, and Ben Simmons didn’t dress while Lakers’ stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis sat the second game of a road back-to-back series in Brooklyn.

Royce O’Neale got the Nets going early on with three quick buckets and Brooklyn flew out to a double digit lead. LA struggled from the field in the first 12 minutes of the game, scoring just 16 points and shooting under 35% from the field.

The Nets made things even more difficult by controllng the pace of play thanks to Kyrie Irving’s insistence on running and gunning as Brooklyn kept hold of double digit lead for most of the first half.

Los Angeles looked like a different team coming out of the halftime break as Thomas Bryant came to life and led a 14-0 run to start the third quarter to give the Lakers the lead for the first time since the early seconds of the game.

With no James or Davis the Lakers failed to keep that momentum rolling once they pulled ahead, and quickly fell behind thanks to some brilliant bench play from Brooklyn. Patty Mills and Cam Thomas both finished the night with 21 points and each had their say in a 10-0 run that ran into the first minutes of the fourth quarter.

Irving didn’t run wild in the fourth quarter like he did against the Knicks in the Nets previous game because he didn’t have to. Day’Ron Sharpe, Nick Claxton and Yuta Watanabe were playing some fantastic defense around the rim and they helped carry the Nets to the 17 point win.

Irving ended the night with 26 points, seven rebounds and six assists as the Nets’ bench had 65 of the 121 points scored on Monday night.

The loss keeps the Lakers in 13th place in the West, but they sit just three and a half games back of the LA Clippers in 4th place in a very compact conference. Brooklyn meanwhile are just looking to hang with the top teams in the East as they wait for Kevin Durant to return from injury. Durant said he has the All-Star game circled as a potential return game, but time will tell if he can return before.