So far in his postseason career, Los Angeles Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell has been consistently inconsistent.
Coming into this year’s playoffs, he had never shot above 45 percent in a single playoff game, and he did not have such a performance until Game 4 of the first round against the Memphis Grizzlies.
Since then, he has had a couple of other good or great games, but interspersed between them have been a couple of duds.
Yet in Game 3 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Golden State Warriors, Russell came out on fire. He made each of his four shots, three of which were 3-pointers, and he carried the Lakers early while his teammates had trouble hitting from the field.
They finished the first half with an 11-point lead, and the biggest reason was Russell’s 21 points and 5-of-7 shooting from downtown. It tied a franchise postseason record for most made treys in a half, and he became the first player in the Lakers’ storied history to reach 20 points and five triples by halftime of a playoff game.
Russell did not score a single point in the second half, but he had done his job, as he allowed the Lakers to defeat Golden State 127-97. He finished the game 8-of-13 overall and 5-of-8 from beyond the arc, and it was the fourth time in the last six games he had shot better than 45 percent from the field, as well as the second time in the last four contests he had gone above 60 percent overall.
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Story originally appeared on LeBron Wire