NBA scores 2017: John Wall had no luck against Lonzo Ball and 6 more great things from Wednesday night

Wall may have scored more than Ball, but he didn’t get the win.

Oct 26, 2017, 12:00 PM UTC

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

John Wall didn’t win his point guard duel, as much as ESPN wanted him to. In a head-to-head battle against Lonzo Ball, it was the Los Angeles Lakers who ended up with the 102-99 victory in overtime, besting the Washington Wizards and Wall in the process.

The narrative coming into the game was about Wall, and his supposed dominance against rookie point guards. These statistics seem a little overblown — Wall is generally excellent, rookie point guards generally struggle, and the combination of the two will naturally lead to results like this. Still, it was a fun narrative.

What really hyped it up was Marcin Gortat, Wall’s teammates who couldn’t resist feeding a little bit of s*** talk to the ol’ Twitter content machine.

Well ... it was a nice effort. Wall finished with 18 points on 7-of-22 shooting, and while Lonzo Ball’s scoring was even worse than that (six points on 2-of-11 shooting), he contributed in other ways — eight rebounds, 10 assists, a team-high plus-13, and a win.

Wait, the Lakers really beat the Wizards?

Brandon Ingram is starting to do more than just show signs. The long-limbed, potential-filled pick for Los Angeles had a terrible year last season, and while you could excuse that due to his upside, the Lakers really need to see results this year. Ingram is starting to do just that. He had the game-tying putback — off his own missed layup, mind you — to send the game into overtime, where the Lakers pulled off a win.

John Wall was actually much better earlier in the game ... and then 1-of-11 in the fourth quarter and overtime. That’s not great. Bradley Beal almost won it in regulation, too, but his last second three-pointer clanked off back iron.

For the “I hate Lonzo Ball because of his last name” crowd

Seriously, though, Ball is really good at basketball. Ignore his 2-of-11 shooting line; this dude makes his team better and that’s all that ultimately matters. He’ll have some major learning curves this year, and he’s already seeing some of them. He’s no bust, though.

Lakers-Wizards wasn’t even the best upset of the night.

Let’s grade the upsets.

Mavericks beat the Grizzlies: 4.5 of 10 on the UPSET METER

Dallas was bound to get a win eventually, and Memphis wasn’t going to be undefeated forever. Don’t worry; it’s a back-to-back home-and-home, so the Grizzlies can get revenge on Thursday. (That-was-a-lot-of-hyphens, wow.)

Pistons beat the Timberwolves: 6.34 of 10 on the UPSET METER

Detroit is supposed to be bad. Minnesota is supposed to be good. What the hell, y’all.

For real, though, this is why I was low on the Timberwolves coming into the season. I don’t trust them yet. They’re still wildly young, and they were so atrocious defensively last season that I just don’t think they will turn it around in a heartbeat. Over the course of the season, Tom Thibodeau’s coaching plus a star example in Jimmy Butler may swing the tide. Right now, there’s just too much that can mess this team up.

Nets beat the Cavaliers: 8.7 of 10 on the UPSET METER

We know Cleveland doesn’t care about the regular season, yet this is taking it a little bit too far, even for a liberal-minded-why-does-the-regular-season-even-matter person like myself.

LeBron James is still better than all of his teammates

Just to be clear, the Nets loss obviously does not fall on him. In his second start at point guard, he had 29 points, 10 rebounds, 13 assists, and four blocks. The only other players to ever have a line like that: Charles Barkley, and also LeBron in 2010.

The Warriors almost lost to Toronto

Never gonna happen when Steph does Steph stuff like this, though.

The Spurs are undead

At 4-0, they have the best record in the league — the Clippers (3-0) are the only other undefeated team — and they’re doing it all without Kawhi Leonard. THEY ARE UNDEAD. YOU CANNOT KILL THEM BECAUSE THEY DO NOT LIVE LIKE US MERE MORTALS. Everyone said, “Well, maybe this is the year they fall off a little,” and we all knew deep inside that we were dumb to even think that. Well, guess what, we were dumb to even think that.