The Los Angeles Lakers hosted the San Antonio Spurs on Wednesday night in the quarterfinals of the Emirates NBA Cup.
The winner would advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas this weekend, where they would play the Oklahoma City Thunder, who knocked off the Phoenix Suns in their quarterfinal matchup. Victor Wembanyama was still out of the lineup, but that didn’t matter as the Spurs outplayed the Lakers to come away with a 132-119 victory.
LeBron James kicked off the scoring and then found Deandre Ayton for a midrange shot to take an early lead. De’Aaron Fox responded with five straight points for the Spurs, although Luka Doncic then matched him with a layup and three-point play.
Doncic is leading the league in first quarter scoring and that continued in this one with 11 points. The Lakers were struggling on the defensive glass, however, with Keldon Johnson getting hot as a result to give the Spurs a 39-30 lead at the end of the first.
San Antonio’s hot 3-point shooting continued into the second quarter as they ripped off eight straight points, forcing a Lakers timeout.
Frustration was mounting for the Lakers as Doncic and JJ Redick both got technical fouls in the first half for arguing calls.
Doncic tried to channel that frustration to get his team back in the game, and after going down by as many as 18, they closed the half strong to get their deficit to 70-58 going into the halftime locker room. James got the crowd going at the end of the quarter with a monster poster dunk on Luke Kornet.
The Lakers were not able to carry that momentum into the second half as the Spurs ripped off a quick 10-2 run to begin the third quarter.
Marcus Smart tried to get his team back in it with back-to-back triples. He went for a third one and missed though, and that resulted in a three-point play for the Spurs in transition. The Lakers’ defense continued to struggle at the 3-point line and on the glass, resulting in a 104-87 deficit going into the fourth.
The Spurs kept pouring it on to start the fourth as the Lakers couldn’t get any stops. Smart got hot from deep to try to bring his team back and the deficit got all the way down to eight in the final minutes. That was as closed as they got though as San Antonio closed out the win, dropping L.A. to 17-7 on the season.
What’s next for the Lakers…
With this loss, the Lakers will not advance to the semifinals of the Emirates NBA Cup. Instead, they will have one more regular season game added to their schedule against the Phoenix Suns on Sunday at 5 p.m. PT.
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