Luka Doncic's 45 points can't save Lakers from third straight loss, but hope lies ahead

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 them through the finish line.

The last of those three — execution — was lacking more than anything else Thursday at Milwaukee, 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,” coach JJ Redick said after the Lakers' 126-106 loss, their third in a row. “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, 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,” guard 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, the game never really looked within reach. Instead, the Lakers 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 game, on a night when he was digging into his bag of tricks with deep threes and drives in which he pulled the emergency brake and trips to the line thanks to his physicality, was kind of pointless.

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

While it appeared Redick’s defensive demands would be too much for them to handle, something else he said before the 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 on this trip, meaning none of them will be available Friday night in Denver. But Redick also said the trio would be considered “day to day” when the team returns home, meaning the Lakers (40-24) have a good chance to get whole sooner rather than later.

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

Doncic said “we’ll see” when it comes to his availability for Friday, which figures to be another tough game against a Nuggets team the Lakers are battling for playoff positioning. And Reaves, who scored 28 on Thursday, had a big ice pack wrapped around his right wrist, acknowledging that he’s banged up as well.

Making matters worse, the Lakers are in a stretch of six games in eight days.

“Tough stretch. Never been a part of anything like it but got to figure it out,” said wing Dorian Finney-Smith, who returned after missing a game. “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.