Lakers' bitter day: crushed by Thunder and Doncic injured

It was expected to be one of the best games of the NBA regular season. But it wasn't. The Oklahoma City Thunder gave no chance and crushed the Los Angeles Lakers (139-96) at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma city, in a game in which, in addition to being embarrassed, the Los Angeles franchise suffered a setback that could shape its trajectory for the remainder of the season.

Lakers star Luka Doncic, withdrew injured in the third quarter after suffering muscular discomfort in the hamstring of his left leg almost since the start of the game. The Slovenian player spent 26 minutes on the court - he had time to score 12 points - until he had to end his participation against the Thunder.

Farewell to the MVP

This misfortune drastically reduces Doncic's chances of being named Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the regular season. And, in addition, he could miss the first games of the Playoffs -a phase for which the Lakers have already got their ticket-, depending on the severity of the injury.

Everything points to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander winning, for the second consecutive time, the regular season MVP award, with Victor Wembanyama (San Antonio Spurs) as the main rival.

Lakers head coach JJ Reddick explained how the injury occurred and defended his decision to keep Doncic on the court after halftime, when the Lakers were already down by 31 points and the chances of a comeback were virtually non-existent.

"Tomorrow he'll have an MRI on his left hamstring and we'll know more. We discussed it at halftime. We thought we'd give the guys (starters) about six minutes and, if we didn't cut the deficit, we were going to take them out. It was about that time when the injury happened," Reddick said at a press conference.

Thunder are unstoppable

Doncic's injury was compounded by the Lakers' emphatic defeat. And deservedly so. The Thunder, reigning NBA champions, went all out from the first second of the game and gave no respite to their rival throughout the course of the confrontation.

At the end of the first twelve minutes, the Thunder were already up by 23 points, widening the gap to 31 points before the players of both franchises went to the break. In the third quarter, it was more of the same: the Western Conference leaders crushed the Lakers by 45 points.

With the victory already achieved, the Thunder slacked off in the last quarter and the purple and gold franchise was able to subtract two points from the difference on the scoreboard.

As expected, Gilgeous-Alexander was the best player of the game against the Lakers. Even so, the Canadian -known as SGA- was far from giving a performance like the ones he is used to -28 points-.

Faced with discreet contributions from Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams -7 and 10 points, respectively-, the Thunder's reserve players took advantage of their opportunities. Mainly, Isaiah Joe, who scored 20 points.