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SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Lou Williams assumed the closer role that Kobe Bryant for so long relished against the Sacramento Kings.Williams scored 13 of his 21 points in the fourth quarter to help the Los Angeles Lakers rally for a 101-91 victory over the Kings on Thursday night.Williams continually hurt the Kings in the fourth quarter, going 4 of 8 from the field and 4 of 5 on free throws to help the Lakers rebound from a poor first half in which they trailed by as many as 19 points.He is one of those players who keeps getting better as the game progresses, Lakers coach Luke Walton said. Hes been doing this his whole career, making big shots.The Lakers took control by breaking away from a tie game with 10 straight points, the final five by Nick Young, to go ahead 92-82 with 3:36 left. Los Angeles has four wins in a five-game stretch for the first time since November 2013.Its a little like your kids, you love all your victories, Walton said when asked if this was the Lakers best win of the season. It was nice to fight like that and get a win on the road.Another veteran with big-shot capabilities, Young made four 3-pointers and scored 16 points. He had 13 points in the second half, when the Lakers outscored the Kings 56-36.We really were able to pick it up in the second half when we played much more aggressive, Young said. Starting a (three-game) road trip and winning the first one is great.DeMarcus Cousins had 28 points and nine rebounds, Rudy Gay had 15 points and eight rebounds, and Ty Lawson had 11 points for the Kings, who had their modest two-game win streak snapped. Sacramento had won the last seven meetings with the Lakers.I think our defense broke down towards the end. We let them get a lot of shots that they can hit and that gave them confidence, Cousins said. We should have buried them in the second half. But we gave them confidence and some momentum in this game for them to finish it out the way they did.DAngelo Russell scored 17 points and Julius Randle had 15 points and eight rebounds for the Lakers. Timofey Mozgov added 10 points.With the Lakers trying to hold on, Williams drove the lane and was fouled while making an off-balance shot. He converted the free throw for a three-point play and a 97-88 lead.The Kings led by double digits in the first half but their offense grew stagnant in the third quarter and continued halfway through the fourth, when they were outscored 28-21.Both Young and Russell had eight points in the third quarter, when the Lakers outscored the Kings 23-18 and pulled within 73-70 heading into the fourth.TIP-INSLakers: The Lakers opened the game making their first five shots, then missed 12 of 14 the remainder of the quarter and trailed 30-16. ... Larry Nance Jr. entered the game in the first quarter. He missed Tuesdays game against Dallas due to concussion symptoms. .. Los Angeles committed 21 turnovers that led to 27 points.Kings: Lawson made his first field-goal attempt. In the previous three games Lawson had missed 15 straight shots and scored six points in 77 minutes. ... Cousins made two 3-pointers in the games opening four minutes. He entered the game 5 of 22. ... Playing in his second game following an eight-game suspension, Lawson missed nine of 11 shots and had six points.BENCH BUNCHWilliams was the key contributor in the Lakers 41-24 advantage in bench points.Both Jordan Clarkson and Tarik Black had seven points in a reserve role. Nance played 22 minutes and had only two points, but he secured seven rebounds and had two steals.He (Williams) is one of the players that can get off at any minute, Gay said. I honestly think that hes underrated. Hes a guy who can get buckets and also he knows how to facilitate.UP NEXTLakers: Play at New Orleans on Saturday. The Pelicans got their first win of the season Thursday at Milwaukee.Kings: In Portland on Friday night, facing a tough back-to-back. Cheap Hockey Jerseys .25 million option on reliever Jose Veras. Clearance Hockey Jerseys Store . -- Quarterback Will Finch threw for 252 yards and three touchdowns, and Yannick Harou rushed in two scores as the No. http://www.cheaphockeychina.com/ . - Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie never doubted he would bring back coach Dennis Allen for a third year despite back-to-back 4-12 records. Cheap Arizona Coyotes Jerseys China . LOUIS -- Mike Smith is used to facing plenty of shots, so this was nothing new. Cheap Calgary Flames Jerseys China . Badenhop was 2-3 with a 3.47 ERA in 63 relief appearances for Milwaukee this season. He is 18-20 in his career with three saves and a 3. The day before the All-Star Game, Max Scherzer was in a good mood. He talked about University of Missouri football, how the curveball he developed in 2013 took his game to the next level and the new cutter hes starting to throw. Then he was asked about the home run spike across the majors.Im not going to throw that stone and make accusations, he said with his agitation showing. But it would be interesting to see what Major League Baseball says. Do they have any opinions or thoughts or reasons? You dont see year-to-year jumps like this. Usually, everything stays within itself unless something drastic happens, like moving the fences in around the league, and that didnt happen.About the ball ...Even if they did make a change, Scherzer said, I wouldnt be able to feel anything different.With a National League-leading 21 home runs allowed, maybe Scherzer is simply a little sensitive to the topic of home runs. But he isnt the only pitcher serving them up. Entering Mondays games, MLB was on pace for 5,584 home runs. That would be 675 more than in 2015, a 13.8 percent increase, and a staggering 1,398 more than in 2014, an increase of more than 33 percent. The only season with a higher rate of home runs hit was 2000, in the heart of the steroid era.Players live in a sort of baseball bubble, hyper-focused on the day-to-day and often unaware of the bigger trends, but the rise in home runs is a hot topic in many clubhouses.One conspiracy theory is that the cork is different, Orioles closer Zach Britton?said. The balls are flying, so as players, were like, There are two things that fans really like: strikeouts and home runs. Youre getting a lot of that this year. Some players -- not just on our team, we were talking to other players in general -- we wondered if the cork was different. I know MLB wanted to get more offense in the game, so you can do that without changing a strike zone or something in general? You can somehow change the cork maybe.Blue Jays starter Marco Estrada has talked about this with teammate R.A. Dickey.I dont know if its true or not, but he thinks theyre winding the balls a little tighter this year, Estrada said. It kind of makes sense, because it feels like guys are hitting home runs left and right this year.Astros pitchers were aware early on, reliever Will Harris?said.I know in April, it was ridiculous the amount of home runs that were being hit, he said. You saw the big innings, a lot of six-, seven-run innings and guys hitting the balls out of ballparks, so I dont know whats up. Scouting reports, advanced scouting, all that kind of stuff, I dont know. Global warming? Maybe its a little hotter in these ballparks.Maybe the balls are slicker this year, Britton said: They definitely dont rub them down as much. Thats been an issue we talk about all the time as pitchers. Its so hard to grip baseballs.None of the other players we talked to, however, noticed anything different with the balls. Brewers catcher Jonathan Lucroy was adamant that theyre the same.We would be able to tell, he said. Ive been playing big league ball for six years. If there was something different, I could feel it.Commissioner Rob Manfred echoed that during his All-Star break news conference. Hes confident, he said, that the rise in home runs isnt related to steroids or juiced baseballs.We think it has to do with the way pitchers pitch and the way hitters are being taught to play the game, Manfred said. Youve seen some unusual developments, in terms of home run hitters being up in the lineup to get them more at-bats. So we think it has more to do with the game this time around, because were comfortable were doing everything we can on the performance-enhancing drugs front.As Manfred noted, former Nippon Professional Baseball commissioner Ryozo Kato was forced to resign in 2013 amid a scandal over livelier baseballs in Japan. There are substantial risks that would make it unwise for MLB to take part in any kind of orchestrated effort to change the balls. Rawlings Sporting Goods produces MLB balls at a factory in Costa Rica, and a baseball spokesman said extensive reviews have shown no change in the ball that might have contributed to rising home run totals over the past year.Still, something seems to be going on, and in fact, this surge goes to last season, when home runs on contact suddenly soared in August and September. (Rob Arthur and Ben Lindbergh did a great job examining this on fivethirtyeight.com back in March.) One factor would seem to be whatt Manfred alluded to: that the game is emphasizing the long ball more than ever, with the Ben Revere-type slap hitters being slowly phased out of regular playing time.ddddddddddddIndeed, the percentage of fly balls, according to data from ESPN Stats & Info, has gone up the past two seasons:2014: 29.8 percent 2015: 30.2 percent 2016: 31.0 percentThe road block here, however, is that our data says the fly ball rate in 2013 was 34.4 percent, and in 2012 it was 34.5 percent. That could be an issue of how some balls are categorized. The average distance on home runs has increased from 397 feet in 2014 to 401.7 feet in 2016. Of course, those are just estimates, but even a few extra feet on the average distances of fly balls can translate to a lot of home runs.Are those few extra feet coming from the players or the balls? A common theory among players is that power pitching translates to more power.I think it goes back to this, AL MVP Josh Donaldson said. The average fastball six [or] seven years ago was probably 91 mph, somewhere around there. I think the average fastball nowadays is around 93. When youre talking formulas and mathematic equations, when you get a higher velocity and youre able to square up a ball thats a little bit firmer, the ball is going to travel further. Thats science.As Lucroy put it, The old saying is, The harder you throw, the farther it goes. I think its true in this case. Strikeout numbers are up too. Its all related.Except science suggests that pitcher velocity has little to do with home run distance. Take the Home Run Derby as an example: Batters are crushing 70 mph fastballs. Dr. Alan Nathan, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois, has written that each mph of pitch speed adds about 0.2 feet to the distance of a batted ball. In that case, the difference between connecting squarely with 91 mph fastballs and connecting with 95 mph balls is about 0.8 feet, which explains only a small part of the increase in fly ball and home run distances.That means home runs are coming primarily from exit velocity generated by the hitter, which comes largely from bat speed, and that leads to another theory: The new wave of young sluggers, such as Kris Bryant and Corey Seager, is largely responsible for the uptick.Joe Sheehan wrote about the home run spike Monday and studied the impact of young hitters by tracking the home run rates for the debut classes of 2014, 2015 and 2016. Theyre hitting for more power -- the 2014 class had a 2.1 percent HR/PA rate that year and is at 3.1 percent in 2016, while the 2016 class has a 3.3 percent rate -- but as Joe wrote, Its hard to suss out whether theyre driving the overall rates or simply riding the wave. ... Remember that the league HR/PA rate is over 4 percent right now. These classes are lowering that figure, not raising it.Stephen Vogt suggested pitchers are throwing too many bad cutters up in the strike zone. Eric Hosmer said the pitching is better than ever, so it must be all the amazing young hitters. Cole Hamels said its about a change in hitting approach.Guys throw harder, and I think the hitters are taking a different approach, he said. The video out there is so in-depth. The analytics are off the charts. Guys are guessing more now, and theyve been able to hone their style of hitting so much, its affecting everybody.That certainly makes sense: an all-or-nothing approach that leads to more home runs and more strikeouts. As Donaldson added, I think its taken hitters a little time to adjust to the velocity youre seeing night in and night out.Batters are hitting .250/.323/.384 against pitches of 95-plus compared with .235/.307/.336 in 2014. In 2014, they hit 193 home runs against pitches of 95-plus. In 2016, they have already hit 219, which puts them on pace for 402. Of course, that could be a symptom, not a cause, if you believe in Brittons cork conspiracy.Its important to note that 2016 is extreme on one end, and 2014 was extreme on the other. The two-year increase appears particularly dramatic because there were 4,934 home runs in 2012 and 4,661 in 2013 before a drop to 4,186 in 2014. Although 675 is a lot more home runs from one season to the next, it represents only 22.5 additional home runs per team or about four per month or one extra home run per team each week.That doesnt sound like much, does it?Tell that to Max Scherzer. ' ' '