Lakers Beat the Bucks 123-112 for a Seventh Straight Win - but Reaves and Doncic Both Leave With Injuries to Watch
Doncic scored 32 and Los Angeles became the league's first 11-win team at 11-2, handing 1-11 Milwaukee its eighth straight loss. The cost: Reaves out in the third with a left heel injury, Doncic limping off in the fourth - with coach JJ Redick saying afterward that Reaves has no Achilles injury and Doncic is fine.
The Los Angeles Lakers are the first team in the league to 11 wins, and Wednesday night showed both why and what it might cost. Luka Doncic scored 32 points and Sandro Mamukelashvili added 23 in a 123-112 win over the host Milwaukee Bucks - Los Angeles' seventh consecutive victory, lifting the Lakers to a league-best 11-2, Reuters reported. Milwaukee, at 1-11 after its eighth straight loss, matched the worst start in franchise history in its first season after trading Giannis Antetokounmpo.
Doncic set the game's terms early, scoring 16 points in the first quarter on 5-of-9 shooting, though Los Angeles led just 30-28 after one. The separation came in the second - a 31-22 quarter for a 61-50 halftime lead, with Tyler Herro, back from a one-game knee absence, scoring half of Milwaukee's points in the period before finishing with a team-high 27 points and seven assists - and the third, when Los Angeles hit 7-of-11 from three, won the quarter 33-23 and took a 94-73 lead. The Lakers scored 28 points off 19 Milwaukee turnovers. Walker Kessler added 10 points and a game-high 11 rebounds for Los Angeles.
The win's closing act was medical. Austin Reaves, who scored 18 in his return after missing Monday's game through illness, left in the third quarter with a left heel injury. In the fourth, Doncic sank a long 3-pointer while being fouled by Kyle Kuzma, held his ankle after the make, hit the free throw and came out of the game with Los Angeles up 24 and 4:25 to play. Afterward, coach JJ Redick said Reaves did not suffer an Achilles injury and that Doncic was fine, ESPN reported - the two sentences Lakers fans will weigh against everything else in the box score until the pair are seen on a court again.
For Milwaukee, the numbers keep compounding: eight straight losses, nine of them by double digits, and a 1-11 start that ties the franchise's worst. Jaime Jaquez Jr. added 25 points and five rebounds for the Bucks, per Reuters. The schedule offers neither side much rest for the questions raised Wednesday: the Bucks visit Orlando on Friday still looking for a second win, and the Lakers go to Phoenix on Sunday with the league's best record and its two starting guards' health as the league's most-watched injury report.
