The Los Angeles Lakers, coming off a dominant March, had a chance to show they should be taken as serious contenders when they faced the Oklahoma City Thunder.<\/p>\n
The Thunder claimed the first two matchups in convincing fashion, so the Lakers had all the motivation to come out and prove they belonged in the same tier as the defending champions. Unfortunately, Los Angeles fell behind big early and never recovered. <\/p>\n
The Lakers lost 139-96<\/a> and had nothing good to show for it.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know if there was an immediate moment. I thought when the game started, we frankly had unforced turnovers. They had a lot more shots on goal to start the game,\u201d head coach JJ Redick said on Spectrum SportsNet.<\/p>\n \u201cLu Dort coming out making threes was big. We settled in offensively in the second quarter but just could never really get it going defensively for us. And that was on a night when Shai played 30 minutes and took 25 shots and scored 28 points. <\/p>\n \u201cWe did a good job of keeping him off the free throw line, but he\u2019s gonna get his and those other guys made a lot of threes. The turnovers, obviously they killed us. We were better in the second half, but the eight turnovers in the first quarter really hurt us.\u201d<\/p>\n The Thunder are the best team in the league when it comes to generating turnovers and scoring on them, and that was made plenty apparent against the Lakers. Los Angeles could barely get into any actions because Oklahoma City swarmed passing lanes and got deflections that ignited their break.<\/p>\n On the other end of the floor, the Lakers defense had no answer for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who got off to a slow start but then scored so effortlessly in the second and third quarters. Not only that, but the rest of the Thunder were red-hot from the 3-point line.<\/p>\n The final nail in the coffin was the injuries, namely Luka Doncic, who was forced out of the game in the third quarter with a hamstring injury<\/a>. There was almost nothing Redick could have done to prevent this loss, but now it\u2019s his job to get them ready for Sunday\u2019s game against the Dallas Mavericks.<\/p>\n JJ Redick credits overall team for Lakers\u2019 success <\/p>\n Doncic deserves most of the credit for the Lakers\u2019 successful March, but it was genuinely a group effort as the team played spirited basketball on both ends of the floor. Redick praised his players, saying that each of them had a hand in the team\u2019s success<\/a>.<\/p>\n