With no Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves against the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday, the Los Angeles Lakers needed someone to step up. <\/p>\n
Luke Kennard rose to the occasion. <\/p>\n
Kennard, whom the Lakers acquired from the Atlanta Hawks at the trade deadline, posted his first career triple-double in just three quarters. While the Lakers ultimately came up short in a 134-128 loss, Kennard finished with 15 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists.<\/p>\n
Fans were impressed by the big game from Kennard as the team was trying to keep pace with Cooper Flagg and Co. <\/p>\n
Kennard isn’t known for filling up the stat sheet, as he averages just 8.1 points, 2.2 rebounds and 1.9 assists per game, but he showed Sunday that he’s capable of doing more than just hitting threes. <\/p>\n
The Lakers will need more performances like Sunday’s from Kennard as they look to secure their playoff seeding. They’ll also need him to step up in the postseason, considering their current injury woes. <\/p>\n
Doncic is out for the remainder of the regular season and possibly more with a hamstring injury, while Reaves won’t play again this year because of an oblique strain. <\/p>\n
The Lakers’ offense runs through those two players, along with LeBron James, so any time they miss makes things much more difficult for Los Angeles. <\/p>\n
A strong game from Kennard is a promising sign that role players will be able to step up to the occasion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With no Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves against the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday, the Los Angeles Lakers needed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":700892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,166,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-700891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-dallasmavericks","12":"tag-mavericks","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700891","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=700891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/700891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/700892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=700891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=700891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=700891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}