Luka-less Lakers fall to Thunder, who win without Shai Gilgeous-Alexander – Orange County Register

LOS ANGELES — JJ Redick and Mark Daigneault fielded similarly-themed questions during their respective pre-game media sessions on Monday night – and for good reason.

How close is the NBA’s MVP race?

Luka Doncic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s reigning MVP, are entrenched in a two-dog race for the award as of early February. Doncic leads the league with 32.8 points per game, while Gilgeous-Alexander sits just behind him at 31.8. It’s that close; the Lakers’ Slovenian superstar also ranks second in the league in assists per game (8.6).

That being said, when the Lakers and Thunder faced off at Crypto.com Arena – the third game of an eight-game Lakers’ homestand that spans the All-Star break – neither of the star scorers was on the court. With Doncic sitting out a second consecutive game with what Redick called a “mild hamstring strain,” and Gilgeous-Alexander sidelined by an abdominal strain for his third straight contest, both sides needed team efforts to try to bridge the gap, and the balanced Thunder ultimately outlasted the Lakers, 119-110.

“That’s a championship team right there,” Lakers star LeBron James said. “We’re not.”

James scored 14 of his 22 points in the second half and finished with 10 assists and six rebounds for the Lakers (32-20), who found themselves in a Thunder-style physical game that featured 52 combined free throws. Marcus Smart shot 4 for 7 from 3-point range on his way to 19 points, and Austin Reaves scored 16 off the bench.

The Lakers cleaned up their first-half turnover woes – OKC scored 20 points off of 10 Lakers turnovers before halftime – and only produced five in the second half, but the Thunder (41-13) won the fourth quarter to put an end to the Lakers’ three-game winning streak.

“When you let them get out and play in transition like that, they’re a tough team to beat,” Reaves said. “That’s too many turnovers.”

Redick put it bluntly before the game: When the Lakers last played the Thunder – losing 129-92 on Nov. 12 at OKC – they turned the ball over 20 times. It couldn’t happen again.

“Regardless of who’s in the lineup, for us, we’ve got to do a better job of limiting our unforced turnovers,” Redick said. “That’s been a problem all season.”

The Lakers started the second half in relatively dominant fashion – outscoring the Thunder 33-26 in the third quarter thanks to a six-point surge from forwards Jake LaRavia and James, the latter of whom assisted on a trio of 3-pointers in the period. They turned the ball over just once and used a 22-3 run to open an 85-77 lead with 5:09 left in the period. The Thunder, who led by 14 in the first half, changed the momentum and took a 93-91 lead into the fourth after a late Alex Caruso 3-pointer.

“When you play the best teams, and Oklahoma City is clearly, you know they’re the best team, you have to have a really high level of effort, and you have to have a really high level of execution,” Redick said. “And then in key stretches of the game, our execution wasn’t great.”

Redick turned to his team ignoring “basic shell principles” on defense, specifically on the trio of 3-pointers from Jaylin Williams in the second half, as well as the abandonment of getting James the ball in size mismatch opportunities in the fourth quarter – limiting James to just four points among the Lakers’ 19 fourth-quarter points.

“(James) 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,” Redick said.

Said James: “We can’t sustain energy and effort for 48 minutes, and they can. That’s why they won the championship.”

The Lakers had their chances to stabilize a lead. Within the first four minutes of the fourth quarter, Redick successfully challenged a foul and an out-of-bounds call. On both following possessions the Lakers failed to score. At one point, LaRavia missed wide-open or slightly-contested 3-point shots on three consecutive possessions.

“I got three really good looks and I missed all of them,” LaRavia said. “It was a tough swing for us.”

Even officiating fell on empty ears, with Reaves attempting to weave through Isaiah Joe and Chet Holmgren to the basket, getting tripped, but instead being called for a turnover after losing the ball.

Reaves was called for a technical foul seconds later, which led to a free throw from Joe to give the Thunder an 88-87 lead.

“I played pretty bad in the second half,” Reaves said. “I gotta be better. … Got the tech, let that kind of get to me a little bit. … So I was just a little frustrated after that and couldn’t get back in the flow.”

During a Lakers’ cold spell on offense, forward Jalen Williams sank a pair of jumpers and forward Jaylin Williams drained a 3-pointer during an 11-2 run that gave the Thunder a 109-101 lead with 3:05 left.

Holmgren had a key put-back dunk with 1:17 remaining for a five-point lead, but the Lakers’ Rui Hachimura answered with a layup through contact to make it a one-possession game again. Jalen Williams then posted up for a short step-back jumper from the center of the key to push the lead back to five with 51.9 seconds to go.

“Once he gets to that bump down that low, it’s really hard to just get a contest and make him miss that shot,” LaRavia said of Jalen Williams, who returned from a 10-game absence to pace the Thunder with 23 points. “He’s good at what he does.”

James then missed a 3-point attempt at the other end, ending the back-and-forth bid, and the Thunder closed out the win at the free-throw line.

No Doncic. No Gilgeous-Alexander. Toe-to-toe with the Western Conference’s best, Smart felt as if Monday night was a measuring stick-test for the Lakers.

“The way we fought, our sense of urgency, all the way up to the last five minutes, we were playing great basketball on both ends of the floor,” Smart said. “I think we’re in the right spot. We just gotta stay, fix, clean up some things. I think we’ll be all right.”

Joe scored 19 points while shooting 4 for 8 from 3-point range, and Caruso scored 17, both off the bench. Holmgren finished with 13 points and 10 rebounds.