The first win of the Lakers’ new era arrived in about the most dramatic packaging summer basketball allows.
Tied with the Miami Heat after an overtime that solved nothing Sunday, Los Angeles walked off the Chase Center floor a 93-91 winner in sudden-death double overtime, with Anton Watson chasing down a Cameron Carr miss and tipping it home to end the game on the spot.
Carr, the headliner of this summer roster, finished with 26 points two days after opening his professional career with 19, and five Los Angeles players reached double figures in a game Miami once led by 14. For a franchise that spent the past week saying goodbye to LeBron James and rebuilding its roster on the fly, a couple of hours of unserious July basketball produced something the week had not: an ending worth celebrating.
A sudden-death finish at Chase Center
For most of the afternoon, this looked like a second straight loss. Miami controlled the opening quarter and carried a 49-39 lead into halftime, and the ESPN game tracker showed Los Angeles ahead for barely three percent of the first half with a largest lead of two, per the gamecast. The deficit stretched as large as 14 before the Lakers began chipping away, and the game tightened into a possession-by-possession fight across the fourth quarter.
The first overtime distilled it further. Trailing 89-87 with 52 seconds left, Chris Manon stepped to the line and calmly made both free throws to tie it. Jahmir Young, who had punished the Lakers all afternoon, answered with a short jumper to put Miami back up 91-89 with 39 seconds remaining. Then came the response of the day to that point: Adou Thiero attacked the paint and finished a driving layup with 28 seconds left, knotting the game at 91 and eventually forcing a second overtime.
That is where summer league’s quirkiest rule took over. A second overtime in this event is sudden death — the first basket wins — and after Carr’s jumper on the opening possession rimmed out, Watson beat everyone to the ball and tipped in the winner. No countdown, no free throws, no review. The game simply ended, 93-91, with the Lakers mobbing the undrafted big man who finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds.
ANTON WATSON FOR THE WIN pic.twitter.com/Sp4eat1ae2
— Lakers Daily (@LakersDailyCom) July 5, 2026
Cameron Carr keeps making the pick look right
Two games into his professional life, Carr is running out of ways to be more convincing. The No. 24 pick out of Baylor followed Friday’s 19-point debut — a five 3-pointer showcase that stood out even in a 32-point loss — with a team-leading 26 on Sunday, and this time the scoring came inside a game that mattered until the final tip.
The shape of the performance was as encouraging as the number. Carr had 12 points and five rebounds by halftime while the rest of the offense sputtered, kept the Lakers within reach through the second half, and was trusted with the first crack at winning it in sudden death. His miss became Watson’s moment, but the possession itself said plenty about where he already sits in this group’s pecking order.
Summer League scoring is famously cheap, and no one should sketch a rotation role off two July box scores. What the Lakers are looking for at this stage is simpler: evidence that the shooting and confidence that made Carr a first-round pick travel against professional length and speed. Through two games, on a roster with no established NBA creator setting the table for him, the evidence keeps arriving.
The bounce-backs behind him
The supporting cast supplied the redemption arcs. Thiero, the second-year forward who logged playoff minutes against Oklahoma City in the spring, spent Friday’s opener forcing the action and searching for his shot; on Sunday, he delivered the game-tying basket in the closing seconds of overtime, attacking downhill exactly the way his athletic profile promises. For a young player the organization genuinely wants to develop, one clutch drive does more for the tape than a quiet efficient night would have.
Watson’s afternoon carried its own subplot. The former Gonzaga forward is part of the Coachella Valley contingent stocking this roster, playing for a real NBA opportunity rather than a draft-pick showcase, and a 12-point, 10-rebound double-double punctuated by a walk-off tip-in is the kind of line that gets a summer big man noticed. Manon, another affiliate product, added the two coolest free throws of the game with the season’s first win hanging on them.
Miami had its own standouts in defeat. Ryan Conwell, who opened the event with 21 points against San Antonio, added 16 points and seven rebounds, while Trevor Keels scored 16 with three steals, and Young repeatedly answered Lakers runs before Thiero’s layup finally stuck. The Heat had led wire-to-wire in their opener; this time they spent two overtimes trying to close a team that would not go away.
What it means with the finale ahead
Both teams now sit at 1-1 in the Chase Center group, and the Lakers close the California Classic against San Antonio on Monday before the full Las Vegas schedule begins. The result itself will be forgotten by training camp, which is precisely why the parts worth keeping are the individual ones — Carr’s second straight scoring surge, Thiero’s response game and a roster of fringe candidates who treated a July afternoon like it mattered.
There is also a larger frame around this group that makes the watching feel less like filler. The front office spent the week tearing the roster down to a new core and rebuilding it around Luka Doncic, a remodel we mapped in our updated depth chart projection, and the wing rotation behind the headliners remains genuinely unsettled. Every strong Carr performance and every Thiero flash is an audition for real minutes on a team that suddenly has them available.
Sunday guaranteed none of that. It did give a reshaped franchise its first final score worth framing, delivered by a rookie who keeps shooting, a sophomore who kept driving and an undrafted big man who refused to let the last rebound of the day hit the floor.
