{"id":594571,"date":"2026-02-10T13:06:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/594571\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T13:06:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T13:06:15","slug":"oklahoma-city-thunder-show-why-they-are-better-than-the-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/594571\/","title":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City Thunder show why they are better than the Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Sports Report, our weekday morning newsletter covering L.A. sports. To sign up to receive it via email (it\u2019s free), go here<\/a>. <\/p>\n

From Broderick Turner<\/a>: In the eyes of Lakers coach JJ Redick, every team his group faces is a test. Still, many wondered if the Lakers\u2019 litmus test would come from facing the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night.<\/p>\n

Even with All-Star and league most valuable player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander out with a strained abdominal, the Thunder are still a problem for most of the league. And the Lakers<\/a> had to play OKC with their own MVP candidate, Luka Doncic, sitting out for the second straight game<\/a> with a left hamstring strain.<\/p>\n

In the end, it came down to the Lakers not being able to hold off the champion Thunder in the decisive fourth quarter of a 119-110 loss<\/a> at Crypto.com Arena.<\/p>\n

The Lakers (32-19<\/a>) had six players score in double figures, but the Thunder had seven.<\/p>\n

The Lakers shot 50% from the field, but the Thunder shot 48.3% from the field and 42.4% from three-point range.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think when you play the best teams, and Oklahoma City is clearly, you know they\u2019re the best team, you have to have a really high level of effort, and you have to have a really high level of execution,\u201d Redick said.<\/p>\n

Continue reading here<\/a> <\/p>\n

Lakers box score<\/a> <\/p>\n

NBA standings<\/a> <\/p>\n

Dream job<\/p>\n

From Steve Galluzzo<\/a>: The NBA All-Star Game<\/a> at Intuit Dome is days away, and no one is looking forward to it more than Barbara Bush<\/a>, daughter of former President George W. Bush and the NBA\u2019s vice president of social impact. She found her \u201cdream job\u201d and is loving every minute of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played basketball until fifth grade. I grew up in Dallas and everyone watched the Mavericks. Then when I moved to Austin it was all about UT,\u201d she said, referring to the University of Texas. \u201cI never thought I\u2019d work in basketball. For most of my career I\u2019ve worked in global health with nonprofits. During COVID, I started paying more attention to the NBA as it utilized its arenas for vaccination sites and voting centers since you could be socially distanced and compliant by using them.\u201d<\/p>\n

While representing the foundation for which she worked, Bush attended meetings with NBA executives and sought ways to work together.<\/p>\n

Continue reading here<\/a> <\/p>\n

This day in sports history<\/p>\n

1908 \u2014 Tommy Burns knocks out Jack Palmer in the fourth round to defend his world heavyweight title in London.<\/p>\n

1949 \u2014 Joe Fulks of Philadelphia scores 63 points in a 108-87 win over Indianapolis to set an NBA scoring record which would last for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n

1952 \u2014 The Baltimore Bullets play the 48-minute game without making a substitution and beat the Fort Wayne Pistons 82-77.<\/p>\n

1962 \u2014 Jim Beatty becomes the first American to break the 4-minute mile indoors with a 3:58.9 in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

1968 \u2014 Peggy Fleming wins the women\u2019s Olympic figure skating gold medal in Grenoble, France.<\/p>\n

1969 \u2014 LSU\u2019s Pete Maravich scores 66 points in a 110-94 loss to Tulane.<\/p>\n

1971 \u2014 Former first baseman Bill White becomes the first Black announcer in major baseball league history, signing to join the New York Yankees WPIX broadcast team.<\/p>\n

1972 \u2014 Guy Lafleur becomes the first rookie in the NHL\u2019s modern era to have three hat tricks in a season. Lafleur scores three goals and adds an assist in the Canadiens\u2019 7-1 win against the Chicago Blackhawks.<\/p>\n

1989 \u2014 K.C. Jones of the Boston Celtics and Lenny Wilkens of the Cleveland Cavaliers are elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Also elected is William \u201cPop\u201d Gates, who played during the game\u2019s barnstorming years in the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n

1991 \u2014 Charles Barkley of the Philadelphia 76ers, playing with a stress fracture in his left foot, becomes the NBA All-Star MVP with 17 points and 22 rebounds after leading the East to a 116-114 victory.<\/p>\n

1992 \u2014 Bonnie Blair becomes the first woman to successfully defend an Olympic gold medal in 500-meter speed skating and the first American woman in any sport to win gold medals in consecutive Olympics.<\/p>\n

1998 \u2014 Picabo Street, Alpine skiing\u2019s comeback kid, overcomes a mistake about midway through her run and charges to an Olympic gold by one-hundredth of a second in the women\u2019s super-G \u2014 the games\u2019 first Alpine medal after three days of snow-related postponements.<\/p>\n

2003 \u2014 Detroit\u2019s Brett Hull becomes the sixth NHL player to score 700 regular-season goals. Hull beats San Jose\u2019s Evgeni Nabokov with a wrist shot in a 5-4 win over the Sharks.<\/p>\n

2007 \u2014 Jaromir Jagr has three assists in the New York Rangers\u2019 5-2 win over Washington and becomes the 12th player in NHL history to score 1,500 points.<\/p>\n

2017 \u2014 Golden State\u2019s Draymond Green becomes the first player in NBA history to record a triple-double with fewer than 10 points scored. Green had 12 rebounds, 10 assists, 10 steals and 4 points in a 122-107 win over Memphis. Green also had five blocks, which made him the first player to record 10 steals and five blocks in a game since steals and blocks were first tracked in 1973-74.<\/p>\n

2018 \u2014 Sweden\u2019s Charlotte Kalla wins the first gold medal of the Pyeongchang Games and Norwegian cross-country skier Marit Bjoergen takes silver in the women\u2019s 15-kilometer skiathlon to become the most decorated female Winter Olympian ever. Bjoergen captures her 11th career medal, breaking a three-way tie with Russian Raisa Smetanina and Italian Stefania Belmondo.<\/p>\n

Compiled by the Associated Press<\/p>\n

Until next time…<\/p>\n

That concludes today\u2019s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you\u2019d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com<\/a>. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Sports Report, our weekday morning newsletter covering L.A. sports. To sign up to receive it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3783],"tags":[2097,7,2931,8695,4056,300,1651,6,67,310,475,179,3966,3965,8694,8697,396,1063,312,991,5200,8693,8696],"class_list":["post-594571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-associated-press","tag-basketball","tag-dodgers","tag-jason-preston","tag-kings","tag-lakers","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-nba","tag-news","tag-oklahoma","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-oklahomacity","tag-oklahomacitythunder","tag-sandy-alcantara","tag-taylor-fritz","tag-team","tag-teams","tag-thunder","tag-times","tag-tuesday","tag-ucla-olympic-sports","tag-wimbledon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116046488586409095","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594571","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=594571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}