DALLAS — The route the Lakers will have to weave through to extend their season to a point where Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves can both return will hardly be linear.
Doncic and Reaves represent nearly half of the Lakers’ per-game scoring totals. There have been few moments this season when at least one of them was not on the court, heralding the ball while running the offense.
And although the Lakers lost to the Dallas Mavericks, 134-128, on Sunday night – losing consecutive games for the first time since late February – the beginning of a regular season-ending stretch of trial-and-error, fill-in-the-blanks basketball provided some clues to who Coach JJ Redick might have to rely on in the weeks ahead.
“Obviously, we ran some lineups that they haven’t seen all year,” said Luke Kennard, who recorded his first career triple-double with 15 points, 16 rebounds and 11 assists despite 5-for-17 shooting. “And when we were down, we stayed together, something we’ve been doing. Especially when we had that really good stretch. We’re still going to need that going forward.”
LeBron James expectedly led the way as the focal point of the Lakers’ offense as they clawed their way back from down by 22 points to get within five in the fourth quarter.
He scored 30 points on 12-for-22 shooting, to go with 15 assists – of 36 overall, the Lakers’ second-best mark of the season – as he battled with Mavericks rookie sensation Cooper Flagg. Last summer’s No. 1 draft pick finished with 45 points a day after scoring 51 against the Orlando Magic. Nineteen of Flagg’s points came during a stellar first quarter as Dallas took an 11-point lead.
“We didn’t start the game the right way and just played catch-up the rest of the game,” Redick said. “Cooper makes some jumpers early, and what is the effect of that? … Just a poor defensive night and again we got to figure that out as coaches and give these guys the answers to the test in a better way.”
Kennard, who Redick said would inherit some of the team’s ball-handling duties alongside a host of young Lakers guards – Bronny James, Nick Smith Jr., and Kobe Bufkin – tried his best to do everything for the Lakers while starting Sunday as Redick introduced his first of many new lineups.
The trade deadline acquisition completed his triple-double, recording 10th assist of the game on an alley-oop to center Deandre Ayton with 6:15 remaining in the third quarter. Kennard played a team- and season-high 41 minutes, grabbing a career-high on the glass and tying his career high for assists.
Redick said he needs to find a second consistent ball handler to lighten the load on Kennard and avoid the swingman playing upward of 40-plus minutes like he did Sunday. James credited Kennard’s effort to grab rebounds, 13 of which came at the defensive end.
Big man Maxi Kleber played alongside Jaxson Hayes (23 points on 8-for-10 shooting) as a traditional power forward in some lineups. Hayes cut the lead to five points with 4:22 left in the fourth quarter, converting a three-point play after being fouled on a two-handed dunk. But the Lakers (50-28) struggled to capitalize on Hayes’ fourth-quarter play.
Dallas forward P.J. Washington sank a 3-pointer from the corner on the following possession as the Mavericks extended their lead to 124-116. On the other end, James missed consecutive free throws, which snowballed when Flagg followed with a jumper to push Dallas’ advantage back to 10 points.
The Lakers turned the ball over 12 times on Sunday, fewer than their 14.4 per game average, but the Mavericks (25-53) made the Lakers pay for it, scoring 21 points off turnovers. The Mavericks shot well from 3-point range (14 for 32) compared to the Lakers’ 8-for-27 showing.
Hayes said the key to finding success in lineups without Reaves, Doncic or veteran guard Marcus Smart, or at times, a LeBron James-less lineup, is making stops. On Sunday, stops were hard to come by with Flagg scoring almost at will (14 for 27 from the field, 15 for 17 at the free-throw line), and the Lakers’ responses never nudged the needle in their favor.
Washington, who scored 15 points for Dallas, was one of four other Mavericks to record double-digit points.
“Defensively, we had some breakdowns, especially in the first half,” James said. “We gave up too many transition points, and then we allowed a lot of their key guys to get to their spots. We can’t do that, especially as shorthanded as we are.”
Bufkin and Smith played a handful of minutes in the first half each, bringing the Lakers to an 11-man rotation on Sunday as the South Bay Lakers lost in the G League Western Conference Finals without the handful of end-of-bench players promoted to the NBA roster for depth Sunday. Dalton Knecht and Adou Thiero did not play against Dallas.
Elsewhere in the NBA, the Minnesota Timberwolves (46-32) lost to the Charlotte Hornets on Sunday, which means the third-place Lakers can finish no lower than the fifth seed for the Western Conference playoffs. The Lakers, who are now tied with the Denver Nuggets (50-28), record-wise, own the head-to-head tiebreakers over the Nuggets and the fifth-place Houston Rockets (48-29).
The Lakers next face the first-place Oklahoma City Thunder (62-16) on Tuesday night back in Los Angeles.
