LOS ANGELES — Seven lead changes in the final four minutes. A pair of double-digit leads squandered. And yet Luka Doncic still had a chance to turn a second-half collapse into a buzzer-beating victory on Monday night.
Coming out of a timeout, Doncic appeared to have his shot from the left wing as Deandre Ayton ate the Orlando Magic’s Anthony Block and Paolo Banchero with a well-executed screen. The Slovenian star passed up an open, albeit deep, 3-point look before dribbling and freezing as Banchero caught up to him with 4.3 seconds remaining.
“I know I was open, but I just thought I was a little bit far,” Doncic said. “Tried to take one dribble closer.”
He picked up the ball and dished to his left, forcing LeBron James to attempt a difficult fadeaway 3-point attempt from the wing in the final seconds.
“I probably shouldn’t have picked up (and) just tried to attack,” Doncic said.
James’ shot was long, bouncing off the rim and falling into the hands of Ayton, whose floater went in but after the buzzer had sounded. The Lakers held two double-digit leads and couldn’t hold on in a 110-109 loss to the Magic, a disappointing end to an eight-game homestand that spanned the All-Star break.
“I haven’t had a chance to really get into it with Luka,” Coach JJ Redick said. “We obviously ran a play for him to get a look. I felt like he had a decent shot.”
James added: “We executed. … Obviously, you have to ask Luka what he saw on that. But I thought he had a good look and it looked like he kinda just lost his balance, you know. Didn’t have a rhythm with the ball, whatever the case may be. And it kinda allowed them to get back in front of him. And I was kind of off-balance when he gave it to me. I thought he had a great look. That’s my POV.”
Victory almost fell the Lakers’ way. After James dunked for a 109-108 lead off a Doncic inbounds pass with 26 seconds left, Ayton, the Lakers’ 7-foot center, blocked a 3-point shot by Black late, but Magic forward Wendell Carter Jr. came up with the rebound amid a sea of Lakers and converted what proved to be the game-winning layup with 6.7 seconds left.
The Lakers (34-23) finished 4-4 on their homestand and suffered their first loss of this season when holding the lead after three quarters (25-1). They have fallen into sixth place in the tightly packed Western Conference while repeatedly failing to beat playoff-caliber teams.
“Every event is its own event and I thought we played well enough to win tonight,” Redick said. “Certainly had the edge and played hard enough to win. We played together. We did our best to play the right way and share the basketball.”
Doncic just missed a triple-double with 22 points, 15 assists and nine rebounds, but he struggled with his shot all night (8 for 24 overall, 2 for 10 from 3-point range). James and Ayton scored 21 apiece for the Lakers, while Austin Reaves scored all 18 of his points in the second half.
During a back-and-forth fourth quarter, Doncic funneled a pass to Rui Hachimura in the corner, who made just his second 3-pointer of the game for a 106-103 lead with 2:14 remaining. Outside of James’ late layup, it was the Lakers’ penultimate lead of the game.
Banchero nearly single-handedly kept the Magic in the game with 36 points, but it was Orlando guard Desmond Bane who put the Lakers in danger. The Lakers led by 11 points in the first half and 12 in the second half – the latter after Reaves made a jumper early in the third quarter to begin a 10-0 Laker run – but Bane tied the score at 81 before giving Orlando (31-26) a handful of two-point leads in the fourth quarter.
Reaves tied the score twice, once with a 3-pointer and a floater through contact for a three-point play to knot the score at 90 and 93, respectively.
“Down the stretch, trading too many baskets,” Ayton said. “I felt like we didn’t get the stops we needed.”
The Lakers led early. Near the end of the first quarter, Doncic leaped for a rebound on a missed jumper from Carter. He controlled the ball but ended up on the floor after Magic forward Moritz Wagner’s fingers raked his eyes. Doncic writhed below the basket, spending a stoppage of 2-plus minutes with a Lakers trainer kneeling beside him. He had the last laugh, sinking a 3-pointer on the following possession for a 30-21 lead, but he spent the start of the second quarter in the locker room receiving treatment for the incidental eye poke.
Ayton scored 13 points in the second quarter, with Doncic and Reaves both sending alley-oop feeds his way for a pair of dunks. Ayton, who also grabbed 13 rebounds, was a hot topic after Monday’s practice in El Segundo without speaking to the media. Redick faced a handful of questions about what Ayton, facing season-lows in nearly every statistical category of late, needed to do to improve. His teammates shared their views on how the former No. 1 draft pick was adjusting to a new role in Los Angeles.
Ayton is never asked to lead the Lakers in scoring, like he once was in Phoenix. Nor is he expected to, yet he led the Lakers with 17 points at halftime on Tuesday, his highest first-half total this season. He feasted on mismatches – something Redick said Ayton needed to improve on, exploiting his size when switched on to smaller players – against a Jalen Suggs-less Magic team.
“Playmakers were feeding me the ball, and they just kept telling me to do the same thing over and over,” Ayton said. “I just was making sure I was physical, and tried my best to score closest to the rim as much as possible, so I can keep getting it down there, because tonight, they believed in their switches a lot. So I’m glad I got a chance to punish that just to switch it up a little bit (and) give them a different look.”
Ayton’s 21-point night was his best output since he scored 28 against the Washington Wizards on Jan. 30.
“Obviously, sometimes he has it going,” James said. “And when he does have it going, we try to find him. And tonight I thought we did a great job of doing that and I thought he played great.”
Bane scored 22 points and Carter finished with 20 points and 12 rebounds for the Magic.