Driving to the basket, LeBron James dished it out to his co-star Anthony Davis underneath the dunker spot for the easy jam. The All-Star to All-Star connection sealed this game’s result with 50 seconds left.
The Oklahoma City Thunder couldn’t overcome a poor offensive outing in a 112-105 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers. It’s a bad start to an LA back-to-back for OKC.
“Obviously, we didn’t shoot the ball great,” Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said on the loss. “We didn’t play great. Didn’t generate a great rhythm offensively. Some of that was them, some of that was us. So certainly not our best game but certainly something we can learn from.”
The Thunder and Lakers provided an entertaining and competitive contest. By halftime, it was deadlocked at 50 apiece. Coming out of halftime, OKC built a seven-point lead before it was quickly erased due to a Los Angeles 34-point third frame.
The back-and-forth contest saw 10 ties and 10 lead changes. Neither team led by more than 13 points.
Entering the fourth quarter, the Lakers built an 84-76 lead. The closest the Thunder cut it to was a five-point deficit. Alas, OKC only managed to erase one point from its eight-point deficit entering the final frame when the final buzzer sounded.
It was one of OKC’s worst offensive outings of the season. The Thunder never found a groove as the Lakers did an excellent job making them play uncomfortably. The Thunder shot 42% from the field and went 15-of-49 (30.6%) from 3.
The ball security wasn’t sufficient either for the Thunder, who turned it over 17 times — which led to 27 points for the Lakers. Los Angeles continues to do a superb job at bogging down OKC’s offense.
Los Angeles did a terrific job executing a zone defense that forced low-volume 3-point shooting OKC to take more outside attempts than usual. The 49 attempts were a season-high and a much higher total than its 33-attempt average.
“It’s more about the way we play and whether or not that yields efficient shots,” Daigneault said on the season-high 3-point attempts. “I thought we left something to be desired there tonight on a lot of possessions. If we play the right way and it ends up being a three, we have no problem with that.
“But there were a lot of possessions like I said — it wasn’t about the passing — just our willingness to move the floor and cut and move them around, like we’ve had success against them in the past, I don’t think we did that to a high-enough level tonight.”
The Thunder were led by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams. Both scored 25 and 24 points respectively. Outside of those two, only one other player had double-digit points — Lu Dort with 11.
Meanwhile, the Lakers were led by James and Davis. James had 25 points, seven rebounds and six assists. Davis totaled 27 points, 15 rebounds and five assists. OKC’s lack of size continues to be its biggest weakness and large teams like Los Angeles can exploit that.
Besides those two, Austin Reaves had 15 points and seven assists while D’Angelo Russell had 14 points and six assists.
As mentioned, the Thunder will need to quickly forget about this loss. OKC is set to play the LA Clippers on Tuesday to complete this Los Angeles back-to-back that kicks off a four-game road trip.
“We weren’t as sharp with really anything tonight,” Daigneault said. “We could’ve been better a lot better in every facet.”
Let’s look at Thunder player grades.