Durant and Thunder thump Lakers as Bryant sits

They played the Lakers at home before Bryant’s announcement and won’t host them again.

It only got worse from there for Los Angeles. Oklahoma City won easily, 118-78.

Meanwhile, Ellie Day, the wife of Australian golf star Jason Day, still has concussion symptoms despite being released from hospital after being fallen upon by LeBron James while sitting courtside at Cleveland’s win over the Thunder last week. Kevin Durant leisurely worked his way to 22 points on 7-of-13 shooting (3-of-4 from deep), hardly breaking a sweat as he diced up the Lakers’ defense.

Oklahoma City rested its starters in the fourth quarter and the Lakers were unable to do anything against the Thunder reserves.

For a young team like the Lakers, losses are going to happen more often than not, but Scott at least expects the team to put up a fight and that didn’t happen for the most part in Oklahoma City.

The Thunder’s 40-point victory was just five points shy of a franchise record for margin of victory.

“We just tried to make the right play every time down and defensively, we just tried to cover for each other”, Durant said. I felt like I was able to play through it and things like that. Lou Williams scored a team-high 20 points, with Jordan Clarkson chipping in 15 points on 15 field-goal attempts. That seems inevitable but the Lakers can trade Nick Young and give the Lakers a better chance to win games.

Durant stayed hot throughout his 30 minutes on the floor, racking up 22 points on a 7-of-13 clip. He found Steven Adams for a handful of alley-oop dunks, taking advantage of the lack of resistance inside. The Thunder did a good job of shutting down everyone else, which allowed them to take a 67-41 halftime advantage. Lakers head coach Byron Scott said Anthony Brown will start in Bryant’s place Saturday, per Erik Horne of The Oklahoman.

“The guys on the court have to learn from it”, Scott said.

“We just had to relax a little bit, get some stops on the defensive end and just play our brand of basketball, and we did that tonight”.

Randle and Russell said they weren’t frightened in their first game against the Thunder. We didn’t come to compete.

“We all know that he’s not what he used to be, but people go and hope he’s going to have a great game”. Total Fouls_L.A. Lakers 20, Oklahoma City 14. Brown’s first career start came in his sixth career appearance. It was Bryant’s first dunk of the season, and the No. 2 overall pick sprinted up and down the baseline in celebration, which landed him a technical foul.