The Los Angeles Lakers have given the Oklahoma City Thunder headaches all season long.
Outside of the teams first meeting, the Lakers have clearly outplayed OKC, and that trend continued Monday night. The Lakers bullied OKC all night, getting whatever they wanted from the outside or down low, and made the Thunder visibly uncomfortable on the defensive end from start to finish.
The Lakers waltzed their way to a 116-104 win, making OKC , which has looked so dominant throughout the season, look incredibly pedestrian. The game was significantly more lopsided than the final score.
The size of Los Angeles is not overwhelming on paper. It starts only one seven-footer in Anthony Davis, and Jaxon Hayes is the only true big who plays off the bench. Regardless of the heights listed on the depth chart, the Lakers feel huge whenever Oklahoma City plays them.
OKC is almost always going to be smaller than its opposition, but the Lakers in particular, more than ant other team in the league seem to overwhelm the young core of the Thunder with a blend of width and power.
Lebron James and Davis’ names speak for themselves, but players like Rui Hachimura and Austin Reeves seem to give OKC just as many issues as the others.
The lanes to the basket that typically fuel the Thunder offense seem to disappear against the Lakers, which takes shooters out of rhythm, which completley extinguishes any chance of a comeback.
OKC has passed the point of the season where individual games are huge points of contention. No matter how good a team is, they will lose some games, they will likely even get blown out a time or two. The concerning part of Monday’s game was the reality that the Lakers are a potential first round opponent for OKC, and over and over again it seems to play it’s worst basketball of the season against LA.
For LA, the game seems to be the opposite. The Lakers are comfortable playing against the Thunder. Despite being one of the worst offensive teams among playoff contenders, the Lakers seem to go through stretches where they can’t miss against OKC. Whether it was Davis getting every call down low at the end of the third, or D’Angelo Russell looking like prime James Harden to start the fourth, LA just always seems to be feeling itself when OKC comes to town.
It was a single loss, and not anything to be super discouraged about, but it’s impossible to ignore the extended track record of LA-OKC matchups. The length of the Lakers spells certain doom for the Thunder. If this is what the Thunder’s matchup ends up being in the first round, OKC will have to make adjustments at multiple levels to escape that series with a win.
OKC has a good chance to get right against Portland in a few days, but it will be impossible for Thunder fans to not have a petrifying fear of the low-seeded Lakers come playoff time.
