Getting ready to drive to the basket, LeBron James had the ball poked out of him. Jalen Williams’ dribbling miscue is the only reason why they didn’t add another highlight play in a one-sided affair between two of the NBA’s hottest teams since the All-Star break.

The Oklahoma City Thunder showed the Los Angeles Lakers that there are levels to this whole contention thing with a 139-96 win. The wire-to-wire saw the reigning NBA champion lead by as many as 46 points. By the end of the first quarter, we knew the final result.

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Eerily similar to their November matchup, the Thunder flexed their muscles on the Lakers. You saw a lot of stop-and-score sequences. At one point, Los Angeles had more turnovers than made shots. Things got ugly quickly as OKC snowballed its momentum to an eye-popping 44 points in the first quarter.

It was quite the humbling experience for the Lakers. Before this, they were riding high with a 17-5 record since the NBA All-Star break. The hot run has basically secured them the third seed, but the talent difference is the size of the sea between Los Angeles and the two teams ahead of them in the standings.

“They know what they’re capable of. They beat the s–t out of us tonight obviously, from the start,” James said. “When we get to that point, we’ll address that. But we have another game on this road trip.”

To make matters worse, Luka Doncic sustained a hamstring injury in the third quarter. He gingerly walked to the locker room after needing a timeout to get off the floor. Brutal. We’ll see how serious it is, but the implications of a strain could completely derail the Lakers’ season. And disqualify him from the NBA’s awards.

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Doesn’t take a savant to figure out the Lakers badly need Doncic for any hope of a playoff run. He’s played like an MVP candidate, but this outing reminded folks why Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has lapped him in the all-time rankings over the last handful of years.

This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: LeBron James in somber mood after Thunder’s destruction of Lakers