The Los Angeles Lakers had to play without LeBron James on Sunday against the New York Knicks, as the 41-year old legend was out due to injury.
Somehow, though, that's usually been good news this season. And it was again in an L.A. 110-97 win.
According to Tom Haberstroh, the Lakers have played 11 games this season in which LeBron didn't take part but they had both Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves.
They're 9-2 in those games.
Apparently, they don't particularly need LeBron when they've got the two playmaking backcourt mates available.
It's actually aligned pretty well with their in-game statistics this season. The Lakers are very good with LeBron or Luka on the floor, but when they're both out there, they're not nearly as effective in an analytics sense.
There's definitely something to this. It's not a small sample size anymore.
On Sunday, Rui Hachimura slid into the starting lineup for LeBron, and Rui played 37 minutes and scored 13 points with seven rebounds.
Mostly, Doncic and Reaves got to cook.
Luka had 35 points on 11-for-25 from the field, including 5-for-16 from 3-point range.
Reaves went for 25 points on 8-for-16 from the floor, making 3-of-6 from 3-point land.
Reaves had five assists, and Doncic and Marcus Smart each had four.
No one on the Lakers besides the duo had big games, and it didn't matter. They beat the Knicks by 13 anyway, while LeBron just watched from the sideline.
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