Luka Doncic poured in 41 points with nine assists, Austin Reaves added 26, and the Lakers still lost by seven at home. Before anyone hands all the credit to Portland, look at who was sitting on the Lakers bench when the game actually tilted. JJ Redick opened the fourth quarter with Doncic parked, in a game Los Angeles was already clinging to, and Portland used that exact stretch to build an eight-point lead with Damian Lillard, Toumani Camara and Deni Avdija burying threes. This loss has Redick's fingerprints all over it.
Sitting a superstar to start a quarter is a normal rotation move in a comfortable game, but this wasn't one. The Lakers never built more than an eleven-point cushion all night, and they were trading possessions with a team that can score in a hurry. Leaving your best player and primary shot creator on the bench while Portland's Avdija, Morant and Lillard ripped off a run is the kind of call that looks fine on a rotation sheet and indefensible once the scoreboard moves eight points the wrong way. Doncic came back and dragged the Lakers within a possession. The deficit he had to erase existed because he wasn't out there to stop it from forming.
Then there's the defense, which was leaking well before the fourth quarter. Redick built his starting lineup around Matisse Thybulle and Ziaire Williams for exactly this kind of assignment: slowing down three scorers who'll torch you if you blink. It didn't work. The Lakers got outscored by twelve in Thybulle's minutes, and nobody on the floor could keep Avdija, Morant or Lillard out of rhythm. When your two defensive specialists are a net negative and the other team's wings are getting whatever they want, that's a scheme and personnel problem, and both live on the coach's desk.
Rating
RatingPortland played well. Morant and Avdija scored 23 apiece, Jrue Holiday chipped in 22, and Lillard hit a dagger three with 43 seconds left for the second 3-0 start the franchise has managed in fifteen years. The Blazers weren't flawless, though: they went 26-of-41 from the line, missing fifteen free throws, and still won by seven. A team that misses that many free throws and still wins by seven won it because the other side handed over room they never had to chase. The seventy-one combined free throw attempts made this a stop-start slog, and the whistles reshaped the flow, but the refs didn't put Doncic on the bench to start the fourth, and they didn't draw up the wing coverage.
This is the fourth game of the year, and the Lakers' offense looks genuinely good, both true at once. Forty-one from Doncic and a sharp night from Reaves is a foundation most teams would take. None of that changes what happened in the minutes that decided the game. A decision doesn't get a pass because it's early in the season. It was bad in the moment it was made.
RTGCollin Sexton's night sums up the sloppiness around the stars: nine points on 4-of-11 shooting, 0-for-5 from deep, in roughly fourteen minutes. Avdija picked up four fouls in the first half and stayed in to collect them anyway, so Portland had its own self-inflicted wounds too. Both teams made mistakes. Only one of them had its best player watching while the other side built the lead that mattered. That was a choice, and Redick made it.
