Lakers can’t slow depleted Suns, lose on last-second 3-pointer

PHOENIX — Fewer than 48 hours after faltering down the stretch in a frustrating loss, the Lakers trailed the short-handed Phoenix Suns by 12 points with less than seven minutes left.

Yes, those Suns – a team that had scored the fewest points per game in the NBA over its past 10 games (101.7), while shooting a league-worst 41% from the field over that stretch.

Those Suns – who were without their top two scorers, All-Star guard Devin Booker (hip strain) and forward Dillon Brooks (fractured hand) – who had failed to breach 82 points in back-to-back losses before facing the Lakers on Thursday night. That was before, as the Suns (34-26) overcame their manpower issues and handed the Lakers (34-24) their third straight loss, 113-110, when Royce O’Neale made a 3-pointer with 0.9 seconds left to help stave off the Lakers’ late comeback bid.

Suns guard Grayson Allen milked the clock before driving into the paint and scooping the ball out to Collin Gillespie in the corner – who quickly funneled the ball to an open O’Neale on the left wing, where he calmly made the Suns’ 22nd 3-pointer of the night to win it.

“Tonight, we were supposed to win,” Lakers guard Marcus Smart said. “We did everything right. We were healthy. We’re playing well, and we let our foot up, and they made us pay for it. And those are the ones that get us.”

Austin Reaves had a clean look from the corner as the final buzzer sounded, but the ball bounced off the front of the rim. Luka Doncic’s near-triple-double (41 points, eight rebounds and eight assists) couldn’t make up for the same hallmarks of recent defeats: squandered leads and mental mishaps.

“I know AR is probably going to be a little down, probably more than everybody else, because he’s the one that missed it,” said Smart, who scored five of his 13 points in the fourth quarter. “But you can’t get a better look than that, and we trust Austin to shoot that every time, so we did a good job of executing that play and it didn’t fall for us.”

Coach JJ Redick said the Lakers switched out of their zone defense entirely on Thursday, attempting to force the the Suns to shoot fewer attempts from the field, “limiting their lasers.” It didn’t work.

Allen paced the Suns with 28 points on 6-of-16 shooting from behind the arc, while Gillespie finished with 21 points on 6-of-11 shooting from long range. The Suns, who also benefitted from 15 offensive rebounds, shot 22 for 50 from deep (44%) – shooting 57.4% of their total field-goal attempts from 3-point range – outscoring the Lakers by 33 points from the perimeter.

“They’re just gonna keep playing and get to multiple actions and that’s the part that I think that just hurt us a lot,” Redick said. “Just (not) being able to keep up with their pace and their speed.”

The Lakers started 1 for 8 from 3-point range, falling behind by double-digits when Jarred Vanderbilt threw away an inbounds pass to complete back-to-back 3-pointers from O’Neale and Jalen Green for a 43-33 Phoenix lead.

Knotted at 49 at halftime, the Lakers turned in their best offensive stretch of the game to start the third quarter. Smart and Doncic sank short-range floaters, LeBron James converted a running layup and Deandre Ayton earned his first points of the game on an alley-oop dunk to rattle off 11 unanswered points.

The Lakers led by as much as 13 points and held a 70-58 advantage with 5:25 left in the third quarter.

That cushion quickly became a three-point deficit at 78-75 when Suns forward Rasheer Fleming drained a 3-pointer. From the moment the Lakers held their 12-point advantage, the Suns squared the game away with a 36-18 run – including a 3-pointer from Gillespie, followed by a flagrant foul on Ayton, that allowed the Suns to open a 10-point lead.

“There’s a handful of plays tonight I feel like if we are better, you know, it can swing a game,” said Reaves, who finished with 14 points on 5-of-12 shooting. “Every possession matters. It sounds like a cliché because there are so many of them, but you know, it can swing the game in either direction throughout the game. One little play, one little mistake can ignite a crowd, ignite a team, whatever it may be.”

The Lakers were down 12 with 6:28 left, but Doncic helped them mount a furious comeback in the final minutes – capped by a 3-pointer from Reaves that knotted the score at 108 with a minute left. O’Neale responded with a layup after an offensive rebound for a 110-108 lead, but LeBron James scored on a putback on the ensuing possession to tie it again with 22.7 seconds left.

Late-game heroics and Reaves’ shot falling short turned Thursday into a rehash of Tuesday’s loss to the Orlando Magic. Reaves’ frustration level after Thursday’s defeat?

“Very high,” he said, his arms crossed as he leaned into the back of a nearly-empty visitors locker.

The Lakers dropped to 11-16 this season against teams with .500 records or better, and Redick’s recipe for Reaves, Doncic and James playing together hasn’t yielded the results they need to steer clear of the Play-In Tournament. Since creating a new starting lineup with his star trio available, plus Smart and Ayton rounding out the starting five, the Lakers have lost three of four.

With the playoffs on the horizon and a packed schedule ahead, the Lakers sit in sixth place in the Western Conference, just a game ahead of the Suns, who now own the head-to-head tiebreaker with a 3-1 season series win. After another late-game lapse, the Lakers find themselves with more questions than answers.

“We just got to think that we got another opportunity,” Doncic said. “That’s what’s good about the NBA. You don’t get a whole week off. You get a game in two days. So, we got to respond to that.”