Reigning league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and current NBA scoring leader Luka Doncic both sat out due to injuries, leaving their supporting casts to play a Thunder-style physical game featuring 52 combined free throws.<\/p>\n
LeBron James scored 14 of his 22 points in the second half for the Lakers, whose three-game winning streak ended with another ineffective defensive performance.<\/p>\n
Jalen Williams, who had been out with a hamstring strain, and Jaylin Williams both hit big jumpers while the Thunder broke open a close game down the stretch. Chet Holmgren added a key put-back dunk with 1:17 to play for the NBA-leading Thunder, who had lost three of five.<\/p>\n
Isaiah Joe scored 19 points and Alex Caruso added 17 from Oklahoma City’s bench. Holmgren had 13 points and 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n
Marcus Smart scored 19 points and Austin Reaves had 16 on a minutes restriction for Los Angeles, which dropped to a pedestrian 14-9 at home.<\/p>\n
Jared McCain scored on his first two possessions and finished with seven points in his second game for the Thunder, who\u00a0acquired\u00a0the guard from Philadelphia by trade last week.<\/p>\n
Gilgeous-Alexander’s abdominal injury\u00a0will keep him out through the All-Star Game this weekend in Inglewood, California. The Lakers haven’t determined how long they’ll be without Doncic, who missed his second straight game with a mild hamstring strain.<\/p>\n
Thunder: At Phoenix on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Lakers: Host San Antonio on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reigning league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and current NBA scoring leader Luka Doncic both sat out due to injuries,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-465458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}