LeBron James led the Lakers with 27 points on 12-for-17 shooting, but it was not enough to keep Los Angeles from falling 108-90 to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday in Oklahoma City. The loss left the Lakers searching for answers after they scored fewer than 100 points in a fourth straight game.
James put the offense on his back while the rest of the team struggled to finish. The Lakers shot 10 for 30 from three-point range, Austin Reaves scored eight points on three-for-16 shooting and was 0 for 5 from deep in his third game back, and Los Angeles finished with 99.6 points per game in the playoffs, the lowest among any team still alive in the conference semifinals. James also misfired on the kind of shorthand that has defined the debate around the Lakers’ attack, saying the team has a guy that averages 37 points a game out before correcting himself to 33.5. “There’s the issue right there,” he said.
That was the night in a series that had already been shaped by absence. Luka Doncic, dressed in a black T-shirt and pants in the visitors’ locker room at Paycom Center, has been sidelined since suffering a Grade 2 left hamstring strain in that same arena on April 2. Without him, the Lakers had leaned on James, hot shooting and defense to cover the gap, but Game 1 showed how thin that margin has become. Los Angeles shot 46.5% in the regular season after making 50.2%, and Reaves was back after a left oblique strain that kept him out for four weeks.
The Thunder did not need a perfect night to control the game. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 18 points and had seven turnovers, both season extremes for him, yet Oklahoma City still won comfortably. The Lakers could point to quality looks and missed chances, and James said they had “great shots” that simply did not go down. Reaves was blunter, saying he had to get to his spots more often and that the team must limit turnovers because Oklahoma City pressures the ball so well. For the Lakers, the next game is less about a single bad shooting night than whether their lebron james stats can be matched by enough help to keep the series from slipping away early.
