Luka Doncic's 45 points can't save Lakers from third consecutive loss

When the Lakers were playing their best basketball in February, they were fueled by the energizing power of belief, the knowledge that they could win on any night. Even when they weren’t at their best, a mixture of pace, toughness and execution got the Lakers through the finish line.

The last of those three — execution — was lacking more than anything else for the Lakers against Milwaukee on Thursday, and it cost them. In a loss Monday in Brooklyn, the Lakers didn’t play hard. Against the Bucks, the ineffectiveness stemmed from something else.

“Play hard and play smart. You gotta do both,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said after the Lakers' 126-106 loss. “And we played hard.”

Read more:Luka Doncic's triple-double not enough to save LeBron-less Lakers in loss to Nets

As the Lakers slog through March with the bulk of their frontcourt in Los Angeles rehabbing injuries, the tank looks much emptier, the joy much more fleeting and the belief, at least temporarily, disappearing.

“Like JJ said when he walked in (to the locker room), he was like, 'Everything was good a week ago.' We [were] playing good basketball. We had won seven or eight straight or whatever it was,” Austin Reaves said. “And we've had some bad luck with injuries and stuff. People that are even playing still banged up a little bit. But like I said, nobody feels sorry for us. Everybody's gonna wanna beat us by 30. So we gotta figure out a way to not let that happen and go compete in games.

“There's no easy way around it. You just gotta figure it out.”

Even with Luka Doncic scoring 45 points, his most since the Lakers acquired him from Dallas, the game never really looked within reach for Los Angeles. Instead, they played 48 minutes in sort of a futile chase, forced to double-team Giannis Antetokounmpo only to leave a shooter wide open at the three-point line.

“It has to be another night where we have to do both,” Redick said before the game. “We have to protect the paint and we have to close out and guard their lasers.”

They didn’t do either.

“It’s a tough matchup if we’re not at full strength,” Redick said after the loss.

And Doncic’s big offensive game, a night when he was operating more out of the full bag of tricks from deep threes to drives where he pulled the emergency brake and trips to the line thanks to his physicality, it was kind of pointless because the Lakers (40-24) lost again.

“Nothing matters if we lose the game,” Doncic said.

While it was clear that Redick’s diagnosis of the Lakers’ defensive responsibilities would be too much for them to handle, something else he said before the blowout loss was probably more important than anything that happened in the four quarters to follow.

Redick said LeBron James, Rui Hachimura and Jaxson Hayes were no longer with the Lakers on this trip, meaning none of them will be available Friday night in Denver against the Nuggets. But Redick also said that the trio of players, James included, would be considered “day-to-day” moving forward, meaning the Lakers have a good chance to get whole sooner than later.

Five players scored at least 16 points for Milwaukee (37-28), which made 17 three-pointers, many coming off wide-open looks.

The Lakers, who have lost three in a row, close out their trip Friday in Denver — another tough game where the Lakers will be severely undermanned. Doncic said “we’ll see” when it comes to his availability. And Reaves, who scored 28 on Thursday in the loss, had a big ice pack wrapped around his right wrist, acknowledging that he’s banged up as well.

The game against the Nuggets is the Lakers' second of three in less than four full days, with the team playing Phoenix on Sunday in Los Angeles. The entire stretch is six games in eight days.

“Tough stretch. Never been a part of anything like it but got to figure it out,” Dorian Finney-Smith said. “We want to be a great team, so I feel like great teams will figure it out.”

And there’s not much room for “or else.”

“A little adversity. I feel like we need it,” Finney-Smith said. “I feel like it’s either going to help us get better ... or help us get better.”

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.