The Lakers won 117-96 behind 24 points from Anthony Davis, 23 from Austin Reaves and 20 points and 14 rebounds from LeBron James.
The win over the Celtics moved the Lakers to 24-18 and up to fifth in the NBA Western Conference.
Davis, who enjoyed a dominant defensive display, thinks the team are “right there” but are another big away from being a true contender.
He told ESPN: “I think we need another big.
“I feel like I’ve always been at my best when I’ve been the 4, having a big out there.”
Davis pointed to the 2020 Championship team as having those extra bigs and how they took advantage of that.
“We know it worked when we won a championship with JaVale [McGee] and Dwight [Howard] at the 5 and I’m at the 4.
“We feel like we are right there, you know, as far as the team and everything like that.
“[LeBron] and I are like very, very motivated to win another championship.”
He then added: “I think our front office is, obviously, working.
“Rob’s been working on trying to better the team. But for us, it’s about going out there and playing.
“Whether something happens or not, we got to go out and compete with whatever is in this locker room, just how we did tonight.
“We’re going to be doing a [road] trip.
“I’m not sure what’s going to happen and I know [Rob] is always working on the phones and stuff like that.
“But at the end of the day, we can’t try to wait on anything.
“We got to go out and compete and do what we got to do to to win basketball games.”
LeBron enjoyed one of his most complete performances of the season, not only leading the team offensively but being back to his best defensively and crashing the boards.
“Be physical defensively, share the ball offensively. Communicate.
“I don’t think it’s even about Boston, Boston knows who they are.
“We are still learning and trying to get better at what we want to do.
“We’ll have a game plan in place for such a great team, but they’re in a different place than we are.”
Asked if they were ready to compete at this level all the time, LeBron said: “No, that’s not how our team is constructed.
“We don’t have room for error — for much error… We don’t have a choice.
“I mean that’s the way our team is constructed. We have to play close to perfect basketball.
“We know the game is never perfect, it’s never going to be a 48-minute perfect basketball game.”
