“I think when you’re trusted by your coaches, one, that helps. So knowing that he’s going to get his number called, he’s been ready. And he stepped up,” LeBron James said of Christie.

 “And he was big-time tonight. Big-time, one of the tough matchups in this league is Donovan Mitchell, obviously. His ability to score on all three levels — from the three line, from the midrange, get into the paint — I just think he did a good job of just trying to keep his body on him, make him take tough shots and not foul him. And he made some key shots for us, too. Key plays for us. He was big-time.”

Christie ended with 12 points, his highest total of the season. He scored twice on dunks off cuts to the hoop and saved the game late in the fourth with a difficult shot to finish a broken possession.

But it was his defense, particularly against Mitchell, that had the Lakers thrilled on Friday.

“Max just wants to win. He plays hard and is going to take that challenge against a guy who is an elite scorer from all three levels,” Anthony Davis said. “He made sure that he knows his tendencies and took on that challenge especially late game when they know, the whole arena, knows they’re going to him — especially with Darius Garland out and stuff like that. So he was the guy and he had two big stops for us. There’s nothing much more you can ask for. For him to only be in his second year, to take on that challenge, it shows a lot about him.”

Passing fancy

During training camp, the Lakers spent a lot of time hoping that their continuity from last season would help kick-start their offensive flow and enable the team to play with greater ball movement. The results have been mixed during the first quarter of the season, with the Lakers’ passing occasionally seeming a little lethargic as the ball sat for a blink too long on the perimeter.

On Friday, however, the Lakers attacked the Cavs in a variety of ways, relying on dribble penetration to launch most of their passing, keeping Cleveland moving and unable to focus on a single spot. As a consequence, seven players scored at least ten points, with an eighth, Taurean Prince, contributing seven. Four different Lakers had at least five assists, including Prince, with Austin Reaves handing out ten. The Lakers’ 34 assists this season were the second-highest in the league. The Lakers recorded 35 assists last week against Houston.

“Just sharing the basketball. if you don’t have a shot, move it on to the next guy and they either have a shot or move it on to the next guy. Just playing stress free and letting the ball dictate the type of shot that we get instead of guys being selfish or trying to find their own look,” Davis said. “Obviously, you’re going to have that throughout the course of the game if a guy is hot or has an advantage, but for the most part, ball and body movement is something we preach.”

Reaves said the assists were proof the Lakers were playing his preferred style — “the right way.”

“Any time you can get that assist number up it means you’re playing the game the right way. You’re making the extra pass, playing unselfish and that’s the goal,” Reaves said. “When you do that, everybody feels good and everybody has touched the ball and when it gets swung their way, they feel confident with it in their hands. That’s the main thing for us as a unit: play the game the right way and get those assist numbers up.”

AD A-plus

After a quiet second half in a close defeat to Dallas on Wednesday, Davis dominated Cleveland’s super-sized frontcourt on Saturday, scoring 15 points in the third and eight in the fourth.

“Everybody’s quick to murder AD when he has an off night. I think if you go back and look at his off nights, in some way he’s affecting the game more than what the average human is picking up on,” Reaves said.

 “They go up these [box score], look and see how many points he had and go straight to their phones and start tweeting stuff and bashing him for not having 25 or 30. But he affects the game in so many ways that on his bad nights, he’s still very productive for us. Any time he plays like this, I think we’ll be pretty tough to beat. He’s super efficient.”

Davis will face the reigning MVP Joel Embiid again on Sunday, and the Lakers will aim to keep him as active as he was on Friday.

“He sets 95% of our pick-and-rolls and when he has an opportunity to catch it in the pocket, or if the bigs are up and it allows us to find him in transition and he gets an opportunity to seal or whatever, we have to find him,” James said. “I mean, it’s that simple. 

And there’s also times where we have certain play calls that we can call on the fly so we can get him the ball as well. But even if he’s not shooting, it’s just him touching the ball. And I think from the beginning of the game, I think right after my and-one, when we got an opportunity to call our first set, I think he touched the ball and throughout the whole game he continued to touch the ball.

“And that’s big-time for our ball club.”