There is a brewing basketball bromance happening in La La Land, as Los Angeles Lakers stars Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves continue to play great music together on and off the court.
On Sunday, the duo helped the Lakers stretch their win streak, extending it to three games following a 130-120 drubbing of the visiting Miami Heat at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. It was the highest scoring performance by LA so far in the 2025-26 NBA season, but in the eyes of Doncic, the Lakers could have done even better and tacked on more points on the board.
I think we started the ball great tonight,” the Slovenian superstar guard told the media during the postgame press conference (h/t Dave McMenamin of ESPN).
“Obviously, I think we could have like 150 points, honestly. If me and AR [Austin Reaves] hit some shots, we would probably get 150. But I think overall, the most important part was how we started the game. I think we started playing the game good offensively and with sharing the ball.
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Doncic led the way for the Lakers with 29 points, while Austin Reaves added 26 to Los Angeles' offense. However, they shot inefficiently from the field, as each went ust 9-for-22 from the floor. Doncic made up for it with a 10-for-12 shooting from the foul line, as Reaves made four of his five attempts from the charity stripe. Where Doncic and Reaves hurt their shooting efficiency numbers was behind the arc. Doncic missed all but one of his tries from the three-point region, while Reaves shot 4-for-14 from deep.
Despite Doncic and Reaves' misses, the Lakers still made 50.5 percent of their field goal attempts against the Heat, with Jake LaRavia coming off the bench to help balance it out. LaRavia scored 25 points on 10-for-13 shooting for the Los Angeles, which improved to 5-2.
The Lakers' offense, as a whole, is doing well early in the 2025-26 campaign. Los Angeles is eighth in the league overall through Sunday with an average of 117.1 points per 100 possessions. The Lakers are third with a 58.5 effective field goal percentage and fourth with a 62.7 true shooting percentage.