OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) \u2014 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 28 points, and the Oklahoma City Thunder routed the Los Angeles Lakers 139-96 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Only six times in their storied history have the Lakers been defeated by more points. They fell six points short of their worst margin of defeat ever \u2014 a 49-point loss to the Dallas Mavericks in 2017.<\/p>\n
Gilgeous-Alexander, the reigning league MVP, got the best of his matchup with Los Angeles’ Luka Doncic \u2014 the league’s scoring leader and one of Gilgeous-Alexander’s top competitors for this season’s award. Doncic had scored at least 40 points in five of his previous seven games, but he finished with 12 against the Thunder’s suffocating defense.<\/p>\n
Isaiah Joe added 20 points and made six 3-pointers as Oklahoma City shot 53.9% to turn a matchup between two of the league\u2019s hottest teams into a blowout. The Thunder have now won 16 of 17. The Lakers had won four straight and 13 of 14.<\/p>\n
Austin Reaves scored 15 points and LeBron James added 13 for the Lakers.<\/p>\n
It was a critical game for Oklahoma City. The Thunder entered the night two games ahead of San Antonio in the race for homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs with six games remaining.<\/p>\n
In a sign of things to come in the game, it took the Lakers nearly five minutes to make their first field goal. The Thunder led 44-21 at the end of the first behind 14 points from Lu Dort.<\/p>\n
The Lakers had another shooting drought to start the second quarter, taking a little more than four minutes to make their field goal. The Thunder reached their season high point total for a first half when they took a 76-41 lead on a layup by Gilgeous-Alexander with 3:25 left in the second quarter.<\/p>\n
Oklahoma City led 82-51 at the break, falling a point short of the Thunder regular-season record for points in a half. They scored 83 in the first half of a game against Minnesota in 2021.<\/p>\n
Joe hit three 3-pointers in an 85-second flurry to put the Thunder up 99-61 in the third quarter. The teams played reserves throughout the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n
The Lakers will host a rematch on April 7.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUp next<\/p>\n
Lakers: Visit the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Thunder: Host the Utah Jazz on Sunday.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) \u2014 Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 28 points, and the Oklahoma City Thunder routed the Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":695277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[56984,2097,7,686,149,4057,166,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-695276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-ap-sports","9":"tag-associated-press","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-dallas","12":"tag-dallas-mavericks","13":"tag-dallasmavericks","14":"tag-mavericks","15":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695276","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=695276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/695277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}