With 6:51 left in Milwaukee on Wednesday night, Collin Sexton and Ryan Rollins knocked heads, and Sexton came out needing stitches above his right eye. The Lakers led 102-82. JJ Redick sent Luka Doncic back in for him. Two and a half minutes later, Doncic hit a step-back jumper while Kyle Kuzma fouled him, their legs tangled, and he grabbed at his right ankle.
The early word is good. “I’m good,” Doncic told reporters, per ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “Obviously painful a little bit, but I’ll be fine.” Redick said Doncic was fine and called it a tweak, as Ben Royer posted from the postgame session. The Lakers have until Sunday’s game in Phoenix to make sure. They got lucky. My take: Redick shouldn’t need luck in that spot. A 20-point lead with under seven minutes left belongs to the bench, even a bench that gives a chunk of it back.
Redick’s Reason Was Honest
Redick didn’t dodge it. He told reporters that Sexton, not Doncic, would have been out there if Sexton hadn’t gotten hurt, as Jovan Buha posted after the game. Thuc Nhi Nguyen put it the same way in the Los Angeles Times: Sexton’s sudden exit forced Doncic back into a game the Lakers led by 20.
I get how he got there. Austin Reaves had already left with a left heel injury in the third quarter, and Quentin Grimes missed his second straight game with a sprained right finger, per the Times. Take Sexton away too and the guards left on the bench were Bronny James, Jaden Hardy and the rookie Cameron Carr. Redick went to Doncic instead.
I would have handed the 20-point lead to one of them. When Doncic checked in, ESPN’s win-probability model had the Lakers at 99.9 percent. Milwaukee came in 1-10. Doncic was not on the floor to secure a win that was already secure. He was there to protect the margin, and he played 2:26 of game clock to do it. He scored six points in that stretch, a 28-foot three and the and-one, and the lead went from 20 to 24. That is all he added, and he risked his ankle for it.
Toronto Explains the Flinch
This didn’t come from nowhere. On Nov. 1 against Toronto, Redick took Doncic out with 2:28 left and the Lakers up 123-107, then pulled Reaves, Walker Kessler and Matisse Thybulle at 1:43. The Raptors went on an 11-2 run, and with 43.7 seconds left and the lead down to 125-120, Redick sent all four back in, per ESPN’s play-by-play. “I won’t make that mistake again,” he said afterward, per The Sporting News. “I’ll leave the guys in. You got to play to the final buzzer.”
I wrote at the time that the bench has to earn those last two minutes. It hasn’t. Here is what the back of the roster has done this season, per Basketball Reference’s game logs through Wednesday:
- Bronny James: six games, 16 minutes and 48 seconds, minus-40.
- Jaden Hardy: seven games, 25:28, minus-37.
- Kevon Looney: six games, 33:33, minus-39.
- Cameron Carr: five games, 24:02, minus-16.
These are tiny samples, so I wouldn’t read them as a scouting report. But they explain the flinch. On opening night against Golden State, James and Hardy checked in with the Lakers up 33 and 6:46 left, and each went minus-11 the rest of the way.
Milwaukee added another data point. At 4:25, after Doncic’s free throw, Redick sent in James, Hardy, Looney, Carr and Adou Thiero with a 114-90 lead. The Bucks won the rest of the game 22-9. James, Hardy and Looney each finished minus-13 in their 4:25 on the floor, per Basketball Reference.
The Math Still Says Sit Him
Now look at what those collapses cost. In Milwaukee, the bench let a 24-point lead shrink to eight and the Lakers won by 11. ESPN’s model never gave the Bucks better than a 0.6 percent chance at any point in the fourth quarter. In Toronto, the low point was 91.2 percent, and the Lakers won by six. Two of the ugliest garbage-time stretches of the season cost the Lakers some margin and no wins.
A Doncic injury costs real games, and the Lakers already know how that one goes. Last April 2 at Oklahoma City, in a 139-96 loss, Doncic tweaked his left hamstring in the second quarter, stayed in and strained it in the third. That was a Grade 2 strain and the end of his season. “I felt a little bit in the first half that I should have just stopped. I should have come out,” he told Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix in October, per Bleacher Report. “I definitely regret it.” His April 2 line on Basketball Reference reads 25:42, 12 points, minus-25. A blowout is still a game where he can get hurt.
He has already sat two games this season with lower back tightness, Oct. 28 against the Clippers and Nov. 8 in Detroit, both part of back-to-backs, per ESPN. When he plays, he’s averaging 35.9 minutes, per Basketball Reference. I argued before the season that the Lakers should cap Doncic around 34 minutes. Wednesday’s 32:20 was one of only two games this season under that line, and he still got hurt in the fourth quarter.
The Rule I’d Set
Redick needs a rule that doesn’t depend on who is healthy. Mine: once the Lakers lead by 20 with seven minutes or less left, Doncic is done. He goes back in only if the lead falls to single digits with more than two minutes to play. Wednesday’s bench got it down to eight, but with 35 seconds left, when it no longer mattered.
That means living with lineups that make everyone wince. Hardy for Sexton on Wednesday was the better call, even knowing how his night ended. The Lakers had Kessler, Thybulle, Ziaire Williams and Jake LaRavia on the floor when Doncic checked in, and a lineup with four rotation players and Hardy doesn’t blow a 20-point lead to a team that started the night 1-10.
It also means the back of the roster needs real reps somewhere other than the last four minutes of NBA blowouts. That’s why I liked sending Bronny James and Carr to Coachella Valley last week. They aren’t going to learn to protect a lead in two-minute garbage-time stints.
The Lakers are 11-2, best in the league, and they don’t need Doncic to pad a margin. If they’re up 20 at Phoenix on Sunday with six minutes left, the best player on the floor should be the one sitting on the bench in a warmup shirt.