Although the All-Star break is nearly here, the Los Angeles Lakers face a tough set of games before earning some much-needed rest.
The Lakers kicked off the final week of games before the break against the defending champions the Oklahoma City Thunder. Both teams were missing their MVP candidates as Los Angeles ruled out Luka Doncic with a hamstring strain while Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was out due to an abdominal injury. Still, the game featured plenty of star power behind LeBron James, Austin Reaves, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren.
Even without Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City is a dangerous team on both sides of the basketball but Los Angeles did well to keep pace throughout the night. Unfortunately, their fourth quarter performance wasn’t enough and they wound up losing 119-110.
Following the loss, head coach JJ Redick praise his team’s effort but in turn was critical of how they executed.
“I would say it’s a couple things just throughout the game and really like the key points of the game. Us going up eight and then, down the stretch, I think when you play the best teams [like] in Oklahoma City, clearly they’re the best team and you have to have a really high level of effort,” Redick said.
“You have to have a really high level of execution. So, it’s gotta be both. I thought for the most part, I thought our effort was fantastic. And in the key stretch of the game, our execution wasn’t great. A lot of that for me tonight was just defensively our shell principles, like basic shell principles. You know the three, the Jalen Williams three, his man was not supposed to help. That was an over help and that was in our shell principles. And then, down the stretch in, at times to start the fourth, I didn’t think we did a good job of getting LeBron [James] the ball. And some of that was, we called plays, and we didn’t execute. Some of that was just not having just the recognition. Him playing against smaller players was how we got back in the game and we didn’t do a good job of getting [him] the ball.”
The Thunder won last year’s championship behind an explosive offense coupled with a shutdown defense, and they’ve been nearly just as good during the 2025-26 season. Oklahoma City is also brimming with young talent, so Los Angeles needed to play a near-perfect game in order to knock off the title favorites.
The bright side to the loss is that the Lakers legitimately had a chance to steal a win in the second half. Los Angeles went into halftime trailing by nine points, but took the lead in the second half before their offense sputtered out.
Redick pointed out that the team didn’t do well getting the basketball to LeBron James, who led their comeback effort. James was able generate quality looks for himself and teammates, but the Lakers seemed to go away from him once the Thunder sent extra defensive help.
This is a good learning experience for the Lakers as they can hang with any team when they’re playing with the right effort level. If they can clean up things on the execution side, then they should be a dangerous team come playoff time.
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