LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — LeBron James had 28 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists, Antho­ny Davis added 34 points and 10 rebounds and the Los Ange­les Lak­ers evened the West­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nals by beat­ing the Hous­ton Rock­ets 117–109 on Sun­day night.

Marki­eff Mor­ris scored 16 points for the Lak­ers. They opened a 21-point lead in the first half, gave up 41 points in the third quar­ter to fall behind, and then regrouped behind some high-fly­ing plays by James to pull away again.

James took only 15 shots in Game 1 and was score­less in the fourth quar­ter of the Lak­ers’ 112–97 loss, but he was dom­i­nant on both ends in the final peri­od of this one. He had eight points in the quar­ter and a pow­er­ful blocked shot on Rus­sell West­brook that flew far out of bounds.

James Hard­en scored 27 points and Eric Gor­don made six 3‑pointers and added 24 for the Rock­ets, who made 22 3‑pointers. P.J. Tuck­er had 18 points and Robert Cov­ing­ton 17, but West­brook fin­ished only 4 for 15 while scor­ing 10 points and grab­bing 13 rebounds.

Game 3 is Tuesday.

BUCKS 118, HEAT 115, OT

Mil­wau­kee lost the first three games of the East­ern Con­fer­ence semi­fi­nals, then lost the NBA’s MVP while try­ing to fend off elim­i­na­tion. No prob­lem. The Bucks aren’t done yet.

Even with Gian­nis Ante­tok­oun­m­po miss­ing most of the game with a sprained right ankle, the Bucks extend­ed their sea­son to a Game 5 on Tuesday.

Khris Mid­dle­ton scored 21 of his 36 points in the third quar­ter, then made a huge 3‑pointer with 6.3 sec­onds left in over­time and the Bucks topped Mia­mi in Game 4,

Ante­tok­oun­m­po scored 19 points in only 11 min­utes, and Brook Lopez and George Hill each had 14 for Milwaukee.

Bam Ade­bayo had 26 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists for Mia­mi. Dun­can Robin­son scored 20 points, Jae Crow­der had 18 and Goran Drag­ic and Jim­my But­ler 17 each. The Heat gave up 12 straight points in the final peri­od, wast­ing what was an eight-point lead in a close­out game.