{"id":196175,"date":"2026-02-27T07:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/196175\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T07:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T07:43:11","slug":"luka-doncic-and-lakers-lose-third-straight-on-royce-oneales-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/196175\/","title":{"rendered":"Luka Doncic and Lakers lose third straight on Royce O’Neale’s three"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

PHOENIX\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The losses are mounting for the Lakers<\/a> in the most excruciating of ways. They\u2019ve lost their last two games in the final second, and it\u2019s eating at them because they used to be so good in late, critical moments.<\/p>\n

The Lakers fell to the Phoenix Suns 113-110<\/a> on Thursday after Austin Reaves<\/a> missed a three-point shot as time expired. The injury-depleted Suns earned the win on a three-pointer by Royce O\u2019Neale<\/a> with ninth-tenths of a second left.<\/p>\n

The Lakers have lost three consecutive games for the third time this season. They were blown out by the Boston Celtics on Sunday before losing by one at home to the Orlando Magic<\/a> on Tuesday when Luka Doncic<\/a> passed up a three and threw the ball to LeBron James<\/a>, who missed a hurried, last-second three.<\/p>\n

Against the Suns, the Lakers rallied from 12 points down in the fourth quarter after Doncic went to work. He hit back-to-back threes during the comeback and finished with 41 points, eight rebounds and eight assists.<\/p>\n

The Lakers made it a clutch game, the kind in which they\u2019ve been an NBA-best 16-5. Still, they lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur losses are louder than other teams\u2019 because we\u2019re the Lakers and because of the way we lose,\u201d coach JJ Redick<\/a> said. \u201cTonight was a one-possession clutch game, which, now we\u2019ve lost a few of those. But we\u2019ve been great for the most part in the clutch all year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lakers (34-24) tied the score twice in the final minute, first on a three by Reaves and then on a tip-in by James, who had 15 points, six rebounds and five assists, with 22.7 seconds left.<\/p>\n

Phoenix put the ball into the hands of Grayson Allen, who blew past Doncic and got into the teeth of the Lakers\u2019 defense. Doncic and James collided and fell down, giving Allen a chance to whip a pass to Collin Gillespie, who promptly passed the ball to a wide-open O\u2019Neale.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Neale\u2019s winning shot settled into the nets cleanly.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no one to rotate, essentially,\u201d Redick said. \u201cSo, [he] got a clean look and he made it.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the final play, Marcus Smart inbounded the ball and LeBron James<\/a> and Maxi Kleber set a double-screen to get Reaves open. Reaves floated to the corner and took a cross-court pass but his shot bounced off the rim<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, just missed,\u201d Reaves said.<\/p>\n

He was five for 12 from the field and two for five from three-point range.<\/p>\n

According to Reaves, the team\u2019s level of frustration after another tough loss is, \u201cVery high.\u201d<\/p>\n

Allen finished with 28 points and six assists off the bench and Gillespie had 21 points for Phoenix (34-26).<\/p>\n

The Lakers couldn\u2019t stop Phoenix from making three-pointers. The Suns were 22 for 50 from three-point range despite playing without All-Star guard Devin Booker (right hip strain), Dillon Brooks (left hand fracture) and Jordan Goodwin (left calf strain).<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, they shot 50 threes, you know? So, obviously they made a lot,\u201d Doncic said. \u201cSo they were just moving around. I think a couple stretches we did a pretty good job being physical, but then just a couple stretches of not being physical and they just were (taking over).\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up for the Lakers are the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco on Saturday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another opportunity for the Lakers to move on from disappointment. <\/p>\n

\u201cKeep playing. You know, the only way to get out of it is to keep playing,\u201d Smart said. \u201cLike I said earlier, you can\u2019t get too high, too low. That\u2019s when the snowball effect happens. We\u2019re still in good shape.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got to continue to trust and we can\u2019t allow games like this to deter us from trusting in each other and trusting the way that we play. … It hurts. But like I said, we get to go out and redeem our stuff and we got to make up for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notes<\/p>\n

Lakers forward Rui Hachimura didn\u2019t play because of an illness, the team said. But backup center Jaxson Hayes, who missed the previous game because of right ankle soreness, played 21 minutes, finishing with eight rebounds and six points. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX\u00a0\u2014\u00a0The losses are mounting for the Lakers in the most excruciating of ways. They\u2019ve lost their last two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[19538,48,52,51,1415,63159,5814,13505,47,50,49,7551,1420,1417,7556,91473,10368,5250,6711,14921,7553],"class_list":{"0":"post-196175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-austin-reaves","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-lakers","13":"tag-last-second","14":"tag-lead","15":"tag-lebron-james","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","18":"tag-los-angeles-news","19":"tag-luka-doncic","20":"tag-marcus-smart","21":"tag-point","22":"tag-rebound","23":"tag-royce-oneale","24":"tag-score","25":"tag-shot","26":"tag-suns","27":"tag-third-quarter","28":"tag-three-pointer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196175","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=196175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}