LEBRON JAMES scored 30 points, Russell Westbrook added 24 points and the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics 117-102 Tuesday night. “As a player like myself, you want to make sure you approach all games the same while also understanding the significance of this particular game,” Westbrook said. “That makes it a good win for us.” Anthony Davis had 17 points and 16 rebounds for the Lakers, who produced one of their best recent performances in their fourth victory in six games overall. With James and Westbrook playing dominant floor games, Los Angeles made 56.5 percent of its shots in the first three quarters and throttled Jayson Tatum’s supporting cast defensively. “I just like the way we competed tonight on both sides of the floor,” James said. “We had a lot of intensity, a lot of ball movement. Guys were attacking the rim. I think defensively, besides the first 14-point avalanche on Tatum’s part, we locked in from that point forward.” Tatum scored 14 of his 34 points in an incredible early first-quarter blitz for the Celtics, who dropped to 1-2 on their four-game West Coast trip. Jaylen Brown sat out his third straight game with a strained right hamstring, and nobody else managed more than Robert Williams III’s 13 points for Boston. “I feel like our energy was great, especially starting off the game,” Williams said. “We just weren’t ready for the punch in the second half, so we’ve got to clean it up. ... We tend to lay back and get comfortable when the game is going our way, and it’s something we need to break.” The Lakers got a much-needed comfortable victory in the 296th edition of the matchup between venerable franchises with a record 17 championships apiece and a record 12 NBA Finals meetings. Boston and Los Angeles split their season series 1-1 for the fifth straight campaign after the Celtics beat the Lakers last month behind Tatum’s 37 points. Westbrook staked the Lakers to a 19-point lead in the third by scoring 15 points in the quarter with a series of dominant drives against whatever Boston guard had the bad luck to be matched up with him. (SD-Agencies) | 