Depleted Lakers dominated by Thunder in 3rd straight loss

LOS ANGELES — Hardly ideal.

Hardly ideal by any circumstance.

The Lakers lost to the league-leading Oklahoma City Thunder, 123-87, on Tuesday night, the second of four games remaining for Coach JJ Redick to try to piece together lineups and mold out rotations like Play-Doh while attempting to suture the wounds created by the absence of injured stars Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. The Lakers have now lost three straight, two of them lopsided results against the Thunder.

Doncic and Reaves are both out for at least the rest of the regular season. Veteran guard Marcus Smart missed his eighth straight game with a right ankle contusion on Tuesday, while LeBron James and backup center Jaxson Hayes were downgraded to out before the game.

One week ago, the Lakers (50-29) were cruising on the highs of their March success when they defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers and held the backcourt of Donovan Mitchell and James Harden to poor shooting nights. Doncic might not have been able to secure league MVP honors, but he was well on his way to first-team All-NBA recognition. One week has changed an entire season, a campaign that will see the Lakers back in a first-round playoff series but with little clarity for the weeks ahead.

Redick started Drew Timme for the first time since he joined the Lakers and rookie Adou Thiero was playing rotation minutes off the bench. Timme scored 11 points on 4-for-9 shooting, 10 of those points coming in the first quarter. Thiero provided a spark in his 21 minutes, contributing 10 points and sinking his first-career 3-pointer.

Thiero, the Lakers’ second-round draft pick last season, might have played more if not for leaving the game with a towel on his head in the second quarter after being on the receiving end of an errant Chet Holmgren elbow between his eyes. Eight stitches later, Thiero returned to the game with a bandage on the bridge of his nose up to the middle of his forehead.

“I thought Adou, right at his minute restriction, he made some mistakes, but he played hard,” Redick said of Thiero, who now has Harry Potter scar-like stich marks above his right eye. “He had a lot of effort.”

Thiero said knowing that playoff minutes are up for grabs amid the “next man up” messaging from the coaching staff, there was extra drive while playing a career-high 21 minutes against the Thunder.

“You could say I’m looking at it like that for sure,” Thiero said of being part of a playoff rotation. “But just trying to go out there and keep building my own confidence and building the coaches’ confidence to put more trust in me and let me go and show what I can do in those situations.”

Redick reversed his previously stated aspirations to fight for the third seed – as he said Saturday before Reaves learned of his Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury – and admitted pregame that seeding no longer matters.

His Lakers need to generate as many answers as possible to a test that has new questions emerging by the day. He needs to find out who can be part of the Lakers’ playoff rotations.

“We’ve got to find nine guys that are are all in,” Redick said.

Forward Jarred Vanderbilt appeared to provide Redick with a mid-game answer Tuesday. After Redick called a timeout 16 seconds into the second quarter, Vanderbilt walked up to Redick in the coaches’ huddle, jawing back and forth with his coach after he removed him in favor of guard Dalton Knecht.

Reaves, along with assistant coach Nate McMillan later had to separate Vanderbilt and Redick from one another during the timeout. Vanderbilt, who played just five minutes and missed three consecutive free throws to end an otherwise competitive first quarter (the Lakers trailed 34-27), didn’t play the rest of the game. Vanderbilt, one of the Lakers’ best defenders, left the arena before the locker room was opened to the media.

Redick called the interaction with Vanderbilt a “confluence of things,” adding that he considered the in-game spat “normal.”

“Nothing personal with him,” Redick said. “Normal stuff from my end. I think for all of us, you know, being undermanned, we’ve got to scrap and claw. We’ve got to all be on the same page, we got to be great teammates, we got to all play hard. Called a timeout to get him out of the game and he reacted. But again, normal interaction for me.”

The Lakers shot a dismal 14 for 31 (45.2%) from the free-throw line, their worst mark of the season. In comparison, the Thunder shot 21 of 41 (51.2%) from 3-point range.

Rui Hachimura, who led the Lakers with 15 points on 7-for-10 shooting, was pulled for Thiero just 2½ minutes into the game after Redick was visibly displeased with his veteran forward’s defensive performance, pointing and shouting at Hachimura after calling a timeout.

“He didn’t do his job,” Redick said of the quick hook for Hachimura, who declined to be interviewed after the game.

Postgame, Redick credited Hachimura’s shot-making, while also shouting out swingman Luke Kennard’s on-ball skills after he had nine assists to go with 10 points. Kennard weaved through the lane to deposit a layup on a fast-break opportunity to knot the score at 42-all in the second quarter. Thunder coach Mark Daigneault called a timeout to halt the run, and Oklahoma City emerged for a 23-5 run to open a 65-47 lead by halftime.

“We have to figure out what’s going to work for us going forward,” Kennard said.

Thirteen players logged minutes for the Lakers on Tuesday, and 12 played at least 10 minutes. None came close to matching the Thunder’s dominance.

“We’ll play the five that is all in that day, and we’ll figure out who that is,” said Redick, whose team is now a full game behind third-place Denver (51-28) and tied with Houston (50-29) in the Western Conference standings. The Lakers remain the fourth seed (for now) via a head-to-head tiebreaker with the Rockets.

Reigning league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led Oklahoma City (63-16) with 25 points on 10-for-15 shooting while Isaiah Joe scored all of his 18 points from 3-point range. Jared McCain scored 15 points and Chet Holmgren had 15 points and 10 rebounds as the Thunder swept the four-game season series against the Lakers and won for the 18th time in their past 19 games overall.