{"id":76373,"date":"2025-12-01T05:31:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T05:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/76373\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T05:31:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T05:31:08","slug":"luka-doncic-austin-reaves-lead-lebron-less-lakers-past-pelicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/76373\/","title":{"rendered":"Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves lead LeBron-less Lakers past Pelicans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As long as Luka Doncic<\/a> and Austin Reaves<\/a> are playing, the Lakers<\/a> always stand a good chance of winning \u2014 even if LeBron James<\/a> is out.<\/p>\n

That proved to be the case yet again Sunday night as the Lakers rolled over the injury-depleted New Orleans Pelicans 133-121<\/a> with James out managing a left foot injury<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Lakers (15-4) won their seventh straight game behind Doncic\u2019s 34 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists and Reaves\u2019 33 points and eight assists.<\/p>\n

The Lakers play again Monday against the visiting Phoenix Suns, but it\u2019s unclear if James will play.<\/p>\n

James missed the first 14 games of this season with sciatica and has played in just four games. Left foot injury management also kept him out of some games last season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something we\u2019ve had to manage,\u201d Lakers coach JJ Redick<\/a> said. \u201cGiven the back-to-back and the fact that he\u2019s basically just coming off his training camp \u2014 this has been his training camp over the last 10 days or so \u2014 [we\u2019re] just being cautious.\u201d<\/p>\n

With James in his 23rd season at age 40, it remains to be seen how many back-to-back games he will play this season. The Lakers have 10 sets left after Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, we\u2019re going to build him up, hopefully, to be able to play in back-to-backs,\u201d Redick said. \u201cThat\u2019s the goal. But you are correct. Every back-to-back is a case-by-case. That\u2019s just the reality of the NBA right now. But we want him to be able to play in back-to-backs. So does he. So, we\u2019re going to work toward that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 15-4 Lakers have 63 regular-season games left, meaning that James can miss only two more if he wants to reach the NBA minimum of 65 games that players need to appear in to receive postseason awards. James has made a league-record 21 straight All-NBA teams.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

Redick said individual postseason awards have \u201cnever come up as something that\u2019s important\u201d in his discussions with James.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want all my guys to get whatever award they deserve,\u201d Redick said. \u201cOf course, I want, you know, Austin, Luka, LeBron, like whoever, I want them to get awards. That\u2019s great for them, but … the list of things that you have to worry about and think about as a player and coach, it\u2019s so far down the list.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lakers scored 77 points in the first half against New Orleans, tying the most points they have scored in any half this season, and they scored 46 points in the first quarter, the most they have scored in any frame this season.<\/p>\n

It figured to be an easy night for the Lakers, who also got 22 points and 12 rebounds from Deandre Ayton, with the Pelicans (3-18) missing starters and key role players, including Zion Williamson, who was managing a left hamstring injury.<\/p>\n

Lakers guard Marcus Smart missed his second straight game with back spasms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As long as Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves are playing, the Lakers always stand a good chance of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[6265,19538,44150,423,48,52,51,13505,44148,3164,47,50,49,7551,44149,1417,44152,7556,1414,278,44151],"class_list":{"0":"post-76373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-assist","9":"tag-austin-reaves","10":"tag-back-to-back","11":"tag-game","12":"tag-la","13":"tag-la-headlines","14":"tag-la-news","15":"tag-lebron-james","16":"tag-lebron-less-lakers","17":"tag-list","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","20":"tag-los-angeles-news","21":"tag-luka-doncic","22":"tag-pelicans","23":"tag-point","24":"tag-postseason-award","25":"tag-rebound","26":"tag-redick","27":"tag-season","28":"tag-seventh-straight-game"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76373","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=76373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}