{"id":90190,"date":"2025-12-11T05:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-11T05:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/90190\/"},"modified":"2025-12-11T05:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T05:57:08","slug":"its-time-for-nba-cup-basketball-spurs-at-los-angeles-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/90190\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s time for NBA Cup Basketball: Spurs at Los Angeles Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome to the Game Thread. Veterans of the Game Thread know how we do things around here, but for all you newbies we have a few rules. Our community guidelines<\/a> apply and basically say be cool, no personal attacks, don\u2019t troll and don\u2019t swear too much. <\/p>\n

The last time the Spurs met the Lakers, it was a parade to the free throw line, with 66 called fouls and 84 free throw attempts. The calls weren\u2019t particularly one-sided, with the Lakers taking 44 to the Spurs\u2019 40, but it made the game hard to watch and impossible to play with any kind of rhythm on offense. Luka took a game-high 17 free throw attempts on his way to 35 points, while no Spurs player took more than 11. Victor Wembanyama was the high scorer that night for the Silver and Black, but he won\u2019t be available tonight.<\/p>\n

Every time the Spurs play a game this season, I go to the NBA official injury reports pag<\/a>e to check to see who will be available for both teams. For this game, you can see some important news: an important player will be returning to the lineup tonight. That\u2019s right, Jordan McLaughlin is questionable, but should be able to play tonight, and that\u2019s great news. Only one player is out tonight for the Silver and Black, and you probably already guessed it. Victor Wembanyama will not be available tonight, even though the team has said that he\u2019s close to returning. It would be great to see him tonight, but maybe he\u2019ll be available for the second cup game on Saturday in Las Vegas if the Spurs win, or the loser\u2019s bracket game which will probably be played on Monday against most likely the Suns.<\/p>\n

The Lakers aren\u2019t just Luka Doncic, because tonight they will also have Austin Reaves and LeBron James available, who were both out in the first matchup. With the Spurs missing Victor Wembanyama and the Lakers at full strength, this could be a tough night for the good guys, but it will be interesting to see the matchup between Stephon Castle and Doncic\u2014Castle has the size and strength to bother Luka, but if he plays with too much physicality he could get into early foul trouble. I predict a big night for De\u2019Aaron Fox, he wasn\u2019t available for the last game and he always plays well against the Lakers. If the Spurs can hang with the Lakers for three quarters, they can pull out a win, because Fox can take over the game in the final minutes, and dominate the clutch minutes.<\/p>\n

Open question: Has the Lakers\u2019 NBA Cup court been repaired for this game, or will they play on the regular season court? It was previously damaged, and I haven\u2019t heard if they were able to repair it in time for tonight\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

At some point during the game, Mitch Johnson will get close to the court and breathe on Luka Doncic, and will be assessed a technical foul for being too close to him. In the process of complaining about the call, he will breathe on Doncic a second time, which will result in a second tech and an ejection.<\/p>\n

San Antonio Spurs at Los Angeles Lakers (NBA Cup quarterfinals)
December 10, 2025 | 9:00 PM CT
Streaming: Prime
TV: Amazon Prime
Reminder: It is against site policy to post links to illegal streams in the comments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welcome to the Game Thread. Veterans of the Game Thread know how we do things around here, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1613,48,52,51,47,50,49,50041,34742],"class_list":["post-90190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-general","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-san-antonio-spurs-discussion","tag-spurs-game-threads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90190","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=90190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}