Oklahoma City \u2013 When the Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers faced off on April 2 in Oklahoma City, the matchup had plenty of buzz.<\/p>\n
The contest featured the top team in the National Basketball Association (NBA) Western Conference, a contender on a 13-1 run looking to knock off the defending champions, and two Most Valuable Player candidates.<\/p>\n
But the storylines will be much different when they face off again on April 7 (April 8, Singapore time) in Los Angeles, especially for the Lakers.<\/p>\n
Luka Doncic, who had scored 40 or more points in his past three consecutive games before April 2, was stymied by Oklahoma City\u2019s defence before sustaining a Grade 2 hamstring strain in the third quarter of the Lakers\u2019 eventual 139-96 loss. He will be out through at least the end of the regular season.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles\u2019 Austin Reaves sustained an oblique injury against the Thunder as well, and he is also out until the post-season.<\/p>\n
Those would be two huge blows for any team, but it really hurts the Lakers in particular. Entering the April 2 game, coach JJ Redick spoke of the importance of finding a rhythm within the rotation had been to his club\u2019s recent success.<\/p>\n
Now, the rotation has been altered significantly. On April 5 against the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles started a group of five players who had never been on the floor together at the same time. The Lakers lost 134-128.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrying to find nine guys that can go out there and help us compete,\u201d Redick said.<\/p>\n
Over the past two games, Los Angeles (50-28) have been outscored 85-51 in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be able to get stops,\u201d Redick said. \u201cThat\u2019s the biggest thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lakers still have plenty to play for through the last week of the regular season. They come into April 7 in a tight bunch with the Denver Nuggets and Houston Rockets, battling for the third through fifth spots in the West.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles will have to try to regain their No. 3 seed against a Thunder team that have won five consecutive games and 17 of their past 18 contests. <\/p>\n
Oklahoma City are now within two wins, two San Antonio Spurs losses, or some combination thereof of clinching its third consecutive No. 1 seed in the Western Conference and the top overall record in the NBA.<\/p>\n
Even worse for the Lakers: Oklahoma City have outscored its opponents 84-46 in the first quarter over the past two games, including a 146-111 rout of the visiting Utah Jazz on April 5. The Thunder shot 56.2 per cent from the field in the wins over Los Angeles and Utah.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a bell curve: You have great games, you have some bad ones, and then you have a bunch in the middle,\u201d Oklahoma City coach Mark Daigneault said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd what dictates how good you are in the middle of the bell curve is your habits. And so, that\u2019s what we tend to focus on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shooting doesn\u2019t always carry over night to night. That\u2019s the most variant part of the game. We want to be a team that, on the nights we shoot it well, we\u2019re really hard to beat because we\u2019ve got a strong foundation, and that\u2019s what we\u2019re trying to continue to build.\u201d REUTERS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City \u2013 When the Thunder and Los Angeles Lakers faced off on April 2 in Oklahoma City,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":702953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,4033,4043,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-702952","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-losangeles","16":"tag-losangeleslakers","17":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702952","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=702952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/702953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}