The Lakers (32-19) aim to extend their winning streak to four when they take on the Oklahoma City Thunder (40-13) on Monday. This is the second match-up between the two teams this season.<\/p>\n
Start time and TV schedule<\/p>\n
The Lakers have three more games to play before taking a well-deserved break during All-Star weekend. The catch is that two of the teams they\u2019re facing are sitting in first and second place in the Western Conference, which should be a good test for the purple and gold.<\/p>\n
Visiting the Lakers on Monday is a Thunder team that is currently on a two-game losing streak and has lost five of its last 10 games. This may sound surprising since OKC has pretty much been the best team in basketball for two straight seasons now but this year, they haven\u2019t been as unstoppable. One reason is that they haven\u2019t been healthy with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander now nursing an abdominal strain.<\/p>\n
With SGA and Luka Don\u010di\u0107 out, the dynamic of this matchup obviously changes. Jalen Williams \u2014 who missed the last 10 games \u2014 will be returning on Monday and he\u2019s too good of a player not to make an impact right away. Expect him to get a ton of touches alongside Chet Holmgren, Cason Wallace, Aaron Wiggins and Jaylin Williams. The Thunder are still a really good offensive and defensive team even without their best player.<\/p>\n
One of, perhaps, OKC\u2019s strongest assets is their perimeter defense, which will be a huge test for the Austin Reaves and L.A.\u2019s ball handlers. With Don\u010di\u0107 out, there\u2019s been an uptick of touches for the role players like Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt, Maxi Kleber, Marcus Smart and even Luke Kennard in the last game. It\u2019s important that they continue to make the most of those opportunities because that\u2019s the best way to make up for Don\u010di\u0107\u2018s absence. This game will be about which role players show up and deliver for their corresponding teams.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, it\u2019s a game that the Lakers must take advantage of, especially since SGA isn\u2019t going to suit up. It\u2019ll be nice to not only keep the winning streak going but continue to further improve their record against teams above .500. It\u2019ll also be ideal to head into the All-Star break on a strong note so they can build off that after. Let\u2019s see if the Lakers can beat the Thunder on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers (32-19) aim to extend their winning streak to four when they take on the Oklahoma City…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":591923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,64012,4033,4043,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-591922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-lakers","11":"tag-lakers","12":"tag-lalakers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","15":"tag-los-angeles-lakers-discussion","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-losangeleslakers","18":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116039138906545146","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}