After Lakers’ second loss to the Thunder, series is over

They have long proven themselves as a Laker team that tries endlessly and never believes they are beaten.

They are beaten.

With the kind of resounding resilience that had carried them to playoff victories without their two top scorers, these Lakers showed they desperately didn’t want this season to end.

It’s over.

The Oklahoma City Thunder defeated another valiant Lakers charge Thursday night to win their second game in two tries in the Western Conference semifinals at the Paycom Center.

The Lakers played hard, played hard, played the Thunder from baseline to baseline, played hard enough to go home with pride.

And still lost at 6 p.m.

The Thunder’s 125-107 victory gives the defending champions a two-game-to-none lead in a series expected to last up to seven games.

It doesn’t last that long.

It’s over here, right now, with the Lakers having absorbed back-to-back 18-point smackdowns by a team whose reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has barely appeared.

The Lakers could steal a game at Crypto.com Arena this weekend, but it would be the only one, it being unthinkable that this gap lasts more than five games.

“You’re starting to see trends here,” Laker coach JJ Redick said.

The main trend is that the Thunder simply have better players, and more of them. Witness a game-changing third quarter Thursday in which they outscored the Lakers 36-22 despite the foul-plagued Gilgeous-Alexander playing less than two minutes.

Ten different Thunder players scored or rebounded in that quarter. The Lakers made as many turnovers as baskets – seven! — while giving up 11 points on those errors and losing a one-point halftime lead forever.

Have you ever heard of Ajay Mitchell? You have it now. He scored 20. How many casual NBA fans knew Jared McCain played for Oklahoma City? They know it now. He scored 18 while missing just one of five three-point attempts.

“We just got blitzed,” Redick said, and this shorthanded team proved they just didn’t have enough blockers to slow down that blitz.

In total, the Lakers committed 21 more turnovers, giving up 26 points on errors while paying dearly for each errant dribble or missed pass against the Thunder’s swarming defenders.

Austin Reaves bounced back from his disastrous opener with 31 points and LeBron James was LeBron with 23 points and Rui Hachimura continued his scorching shooting with 16.

But it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t close enough, and please stop complaining that the refs failed to call enough fouls on the aggressive Thunder. Their opponents always complain about this, and Reaves even stayed on the court after Thursday’s final buzzer to talk to the refs about it, but… don’t do it.

The Lakers shot just five fewer free throws, and Gilgeous-Alexander was hit with his third foul shortly after halftime and, once again, they lost by three touchdowns.

“We didn’t lose because of the refs…Oklahoma City outplayed us,” Redick said.

Still, Redick responded to the fact that while Gilgeous-Alexander shot 12 free throws this series, James only shot five.

“The smaller guys, because they can be theatrical, they usually foul more and the bigger players who are built like LeBron, it’s tough for them,” Redick said. “He’s getting beat up. He got beat up again tonight. And it’s nothing new. It’s not specific to this crew or this series, he gets fouled a lot and it doesn’t happen. The guy gets hit in the head more than any player I’ve seen on drives, and rarely gets called out.”

They once said the same thing about Shaquille O’Neal, and he won three straight championships here, so no, let’s move on from the rhetoric and accept reality.

This season is over, and sooner Lakers fans will accept the inevitability while applauding the effort.

That series actually ended on the bye day between Games 1 and 2, with an injured Luka Doncic officially admitting that doctors had told him that recovery from his left hamstring strain would take eight weeks. And he’s only gone five weeks.

Do the math. He won’t return in this series, nor should he. His long-term health is not worth risking to save a completely lost cause.

“It’s a tough time for me because I came back from injury too early, and it wasn’t the best result,” Doncic said on Wednesday.

Without him against Oklahoma City, this would have always been the worst result, and it was.

Desperate but courageous, the Lakers took the lead on Thursday and were still clinging to a one-point lead midway through the third quarter when the wobbly wheels completely came off.

James lost the ball twice. Marcus Smart, who missed nine of 13 shots, threw up a brick. Deandre Ayton, who missed six of seven shots, missed a few bad shots. And McCain, the Thunder’s backup guard, was unstoppable, hitting two big threes in the quarter as Oklahoma City took a 13-point lead early in the final period.

The Lakers momentarily came roaring back in the fourth quarter behind a James layup and a three-pointer, going on a 7-0 run to get within six points early in the quarter. But Chet Holmgren and Cason Wallace made three-pointers while Smart fumbled the ball and James and Hachimura missed shots, while an 8-0 Oklahoma City run eventually gave them another 13-point lead that was never contested again.

Afterward, James spoke as optimistically as he could.

“We played well in spurts…we had a good game plan,” he said. “We tried to run it as close to 48 minutes as possible, but it just didn’t happen.”

Against the world champions, the pushes are not enough, and less than 48 minutes do not succeed.

The Lakers have been awfully close at times, but there’s a distinct absence here of any cigars, and no chance of any cigars coming through that door.

It was fun while it lasted, and it lasted longer than most people would have imagined.

But it’s over.