Oklahoma City Thunder (40-13, first in the Western Conference) vs. Los Angeles Lakers (32-19, fifth in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Los Angeles; Monday, 10 p.m. EST<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: Los Angeles hosts Oklahoma City looking to prolong its three-game home winning streak.<\/p>\n
The Lakers are 21-12 in Western Conference games. Los Angeles is ninth in the Western Conference with 25.2 assists per game led by Luka Doncic averaging 8.6.<\/p>\n
The Thunder are 30-9 against Western Conference opponents. Oklahoma City is the best team in the Western Conference allowing just 107.9 points per game while holding opponents to 43.3% shooting.<\/p>\n
The Lakers make 49.9% of their shots from the field this season, which is 6.6 percentage points higher than the Thunder have allowed to their opponents (43.3%). The Thunder are shooting 48.7% from the field, 0.2% higher than the 48.5% the Lakers’ opponents have shot this season.<\/p>\n
The two teams play for the second time this season. The Thunder defeated the Lakers 121-92 in their last meeting on Nov. 13. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led the Thunder with 30 points, and Doncic led the Lakers with 19 points.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: LeBron James is averaging 21.8 points, 5.7 rebounds and 6.8 assists for the Lakers. Rui Hachimura is averaging 12 points over the past 10 games.<\/p>\n
Cason Wallace is averaging 8.2 points and 2.1 steals for the Thunder. Chet Holmgren is averaging 15.6 points and 8.5 rebounds while shooting 53.3% over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Lakers: 7-3, averaging 115.4 points, 41.9 rebounds, 26.1 assists, 8.9 steals and 4.5 blocks per game while shooting 51.1% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 112.2 points per game.<\/p>\n
Thunder: 5-5, averaging 114.9 points, 42.6 rebounds, 25.4 assists, 9.1 steals and 5.4 blocks per game while shooting 47.5% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 107.5 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Lakers: Deandre Ayton: out (knee), Luka Doncic: out (hamstring), Adou Thiero: out (knee).<\/p>\n
Thunder: Ajay Mitchell: out (abdominal), Nikola Topic: out (groin), Jalen Williams: out (hamstring), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: out (abdomen), Thomas Sorber: out for season (knee).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oklahoma City Thunder (40-13, first in the Western Conference) vs. Los Angeles Lakers (32-19, fifth in the Western…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[81198,847,48,52,51,47,50,49,7592,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-169150","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-81198","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-la","11":"tag-la-headlines","12":"tag-la-news","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","15":"tag-los-angeles-news","16":"tag-nba-basketball","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}