The Los Angeles Lakers looked to keep things rolling on Monday night when they welcomed the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder to town.
These two teams boast arguably the top two MVP candidates right now, although neither was on the court in this game as Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander both nurse injuries. With that being the case, the Thunder’s depth proved to be too much in a 119-110 win over the Lakers.
Neither team could get much going offensively early as the officials were letting them play very physical on the defensive end. Jake LaRavia hit the first triple of the night for the Lakers though, and then Marcus Smart followed suit.
Austin Reaves came off the bench once again and immediately hit his first shot before finding Deandre Ayton, Jaxson Hayes and Luke Kennard for easy looks. Isaiah Joe also caught fire from deep for the Thunder to give them a lead, although Reaves had a big dunk to beat the first quarter buzzer, cutting it to 31-30.
The Lakers got careless with the ball early in the second, allowing the Thunder to rip off a quick 7-0 run. Nothing changed after a timeout as Oklahoma City ripped off seven more points in a row to force another timeout.
Smart had a three-point play after the second timeout to end the run. That sparked a nice stretch for L.A., cutting the deficit from 14 to six when Reaves connected on a triple.
While silly turnovers continued to be a theme for the Lakers, they managed to keep it within single digits at 67-58 going into the halftime locker room.
The Lakers had a solid start to the third quarter with Rui Hachimura, Smart and LaRavia all hitting 3s to get the deficit down to three.
James went into attack mode from there and finished inside to give the Lakers their first lead in a while. They continued to pour it on, building the lead up to eight.
Jaylin Williams hit two big triples in a row when it looked like Oklahoma City was losing momentum. Reaves got frustrated with the officiating from there and picked up a technical foul after a blown call, and the Thunder regained the lead at 93-91 going into the fourth.
Alex Caruso was giving the Lakers fits all night and that continued with a nice scoring stretch early in the fourth quarter.
The teams mostly went back and forth until the Thunder went up by five heading into the final three minutes. The Lakers weren’t getting any calls and continued to express frustration with the officiating as they appeared to start running out of gas.
Looking to make one final run, Hachimura hit a triple and then Smart drove for a layup. The Lakers just couldn’t get stops down the stretch though, coming up short in the loss.
What’s next for the Lakers…
This was the first end of a back-to-back as the Lakers will host the San Antonio Spurs on Tuesday night and then will close out the first half of the regular season against the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday.
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