Reaves Drops 43 as Luka-Less Lakers Hold Off Pistons

The Lakers finally answered the question that has followed them all season, and it took their second option having the best night of his year to do it. Austin Reaves scored a season-high 43 points as Los Angeles beat the Detroit Pistons 121-116 on Sunday without Luka Doncic, who was ruled out before the game with lower-back tightness. The Lakers led by 26 points early and nearly gave it all away, surviving on a Reaves fadeaway three with 44.5 seconds left.

Why was Doncic out against Detroit?

Lower-back tightness, ruled out before tip-off. Doncic missed his second game of the season, the Detroit Free Press reports, after sitting out the October 28 win over the Clippers for the same kind of absence. He entered Sunday averaging a league-best 40.1 points per game, along with 7.8 rebounds and 7.7 assists, NBC Sports reports, and he had scored 53 points on Friday against Portland. That is the scale of what the Lakers were missing: not just their leading scorer, but a player producing at a rate the league has not seen from a guard in years. Doncic’s week with officials had already been loud enough, from a technical rescinded after the Miami game to a fan ejected at his urging in Sacramento, and Sunday added the first injury absence to it. The Lakers have now won both games he has missed, which is the number that matters most until the back is tested again.

How did Reaves take over the game?

By getting to his spots and staying there. Reaves finished with 43 points on 14-of-27 shooting and 11-of-11 from the free-throw line, with five rebounds and four assists in 37 minutes, NBC Sports reports. He scored 19 in the first half to give Los Angeles a 13-point lead at the break, added 12 more in the third quarter, and then hit the shot that ended the argument: a crowd-silencing stepback three, the Detroit Free Press calls it a dagger fadeaway, with 44.5 seconds left that pushed the lead back to eight, 112-104. He came into Sunday averaging 23.5 points per game, Bleacher Report reports, so this was not his normal night scaled up. It was a different role entirely, the de facto lead option with the MVP frontrunner in street clothes, and he played it like he had been waiting for it. Two nights earlier Doncic had scored 53 against Portland, including a halftime heave from beyond half court, and Reaves’s 43 was the answer to the question that night left behind.

How did Detroit nearly erase a 26-point lead?

Through its bench, while its starters disappeared. The Lakers led 38-14 after the first quarter, the Detroit Free Press reports, after the Pistons shot 27.3 percent and committed eight turnovers that became 17 Lakers points, and the lead reached 26 early in the second quarter. Then Daniss Jenkins took over off the bench, scoring 20 second-quarter points capped by a buzzer-beating three, and Detroit cut the lead to 13 by halftime. A 20-6 run in the third quarter, built on four consecutive stops and scores, cut it to three, 84-81, and the Pistons cut it to one several times in the fourth. Jenkins finished with a career-high 31 points, including 8-for-15 from three, and Kevin Huerter added 22 points with five blocks. The Pistons’ starters, meanwhile, combined for 14 first-half points on 5-for-24 shooting, and Cade Cunningham was held without a basket until the third quarter. Detroit lost a game it had no business being in, and nearly won a game it had no business being in, in the same 48 minutes.

What was different from the last time Reaves led without Doncic?

The efficiency, and it is not close. The last time Doncic sat out, the October 28 win over the Clippers, Reaves took on the primary playmaking and struggled, shooting 6-of-16 from the field and committing eight turnovers, NBC Sports reports. On Sunday he scored 43 on 14-of-27 shooting with four assists, and the Lakers won wire to wire despite the late wobble. The same assignment, a week apart, produced the two opposite versions of the same player, and the difference is the one the Lakers will study: in the Clippers game Reaves was asked to be the creator first, and the turnovers followed; in Detroit he was asked to score first, and the creation followed. The 52-point night against Utah showed what Doncic does when he is the one carrying the load, and Sunday showed the Lakers have a second version of the same idea when he is not there.

Who else decided the game?

Walker Kessler, at both ends, and Quentin Grimes, by staying in the game. Kessler had 12 points and 16 rebounds for the Lakers, NBC Sports reports, a season high on the boards and his fifth double-digit rebounding game in six outings, and his put-back three-point play with 2:15 left put Los Angeles up by seven when Detroit had cut it to one for the last time. Grimes started in Doncic’s place and left in the fourth after banging his finger, but X-rays came back negative. On the other side, Jenkins’s 31 and Huerter’s two-way night kept Detroit alive long after the starters had shot it out of the game, and the Pistons’ bench carried the comeback while the starters never found their shooting. The Lakers’ preseason had already shown the Doncic show could be fun to watch, when he crossed Sabonis out of his shoe in the opener, but the regular season keeps asking the harder question, and Sunday was the first time the answer came from someone else.

What happens next for the Lakers?

Atlanta on Monday, then Milwaukee on Wednesday and Phoenix on Sunday, NBC Sports reports, a road trip that will test whether Sunday was a one-night answer or a real second option. Doncic’s status for Monday is the first thing to watch, and Grimes’s finger the second, though the negative X-rays leave him questionable rather than out. The Lakers are 9-2 and first in the Western Conference, Bleacher Report reports, and they have now won both games without the league’s leading scorer. That is a better record than anyone had a right to expect from a team built around one player, and it is also a record that depends on Reaves having nights like Sunday more often than he has them. The next three games will say which it is.