Raptors can't slow down superstar Luka Doncic in loss to Lakers

LOS ANGELES — He might be wearing a different uniform and going against his old team, but Sandro Mamukelashvili — one of the NBA’s all-time good guys — was more than willing to provide a scouting report for his old team.

So, Luka Doncic?

“Oh, that man is a (expletive) beast. Sorry for my language, but that's the only way you can describe it, man,” the former Raptor said about his new co-worker with the Los Angeles Lakers. “Like passing, IQ, just tough shot-maker. Sometimes the stuff he does, it’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ But then, ‘Wow,’ you know?”

Yeah, the Toronto Raptors know. Everyone knows.

In his first season in Los Angeles as the singular star after the departure of LeBron James, Doncic is putting the NBA’s most decorated glamour franchise on his back, and the rest of the league on notice.

The Raptors can attest.

Like at the end of the second quarter on Sunday, when the Lakers had the ball with 9.7 seconds left. The Raptors had Jamal Shead pressuring Doncic, and then after a screen, handed him off to Collin Murray-Boyles, who has the size to guard the burly six-foot-seven Laker, and the foot speed too.

But Doncic didn’t seem bothered by that tactic, or anything thing else.

Doncic sized up Murray-Boyles, gave him a couple of dribbles to hold him in place before stepping back and hitting a contested 30-footer.

It wasn’t even his toughest shot of the first half. That would be the three he hit over the outstretched fingers of long-armed Scottie Barnes while falling out of bounds to his right that Doncic banked in off the top-corner of the backboard.

And that wasn’t the most notable indignity Doncic served up Barnes. In the third quarter, the two stars got into a slappy, shovey disagreement, the referees bring an end to it by calling fouls on both. But that didn’t stop Barnes from going chest-to-chest with Doncic and that didn’t stop Doncic from backing the Raptors all-NBA defender into the paint and dropping a soft floater over him.

Barnes had a strong game, finishing with 29 points, six rebounds, five assists and two steals, but he had nothing on the Lakers star.

It was that kind of night and Doncic is that kind of player. If he wasn’t hitting one contested three after another, he was casually splitting a double team and loping into the paint before delivering a laser-like pass with pin-point accuracy directly into the hands of a teammate who could catch and shoot entirely in one motion, something he did more than once.

He did it all while arguing with the refs and scolding defenders that dared challenge him.

The result was a superstar providing what superstars are paid to do: a convincing 131-125 win on Sunday that the Lakers (5-2) likely don’t get without Doncic going off for 45 points — 15 rebounds, six assists and five steals.

The Lakers made some good moves in the off-season, among them signing Mamukelashvili, who chipped in 11 points and three assists on 4-of-7, shooting seven shots in 23 minutes.

But Doncic stirs the drink.

He leads the NBA in scoring at 37.7 points per game and he doesn’t have the luxury of doing it the easy way. He made eight of his 12 three-point attempts, all of them contested and self-created. The degree of difficulty? Beyond category.

“When he’s ready to go, he’s unstoppable,” said Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic, whose club dropped to 3-3. “I believe every three he took tonight was off the dribble, and at one point he was 7-of-8 from the three-point line. That’s hard to do. There’s not a lot of people on this planet that can do that, and he’s one of those guys. Plus, his decision-making and understanding of the game and court vision? Outstanding, outstanding player.”

The Raptors did bother him to the point where he made seven of the Lakers' 22 turnovers, but on the whole?

Doncic was maybe the best version of himself the NBA has yet seen, which is saying something for a 27-year-old who already has six first-team all-NBA nods on his resume.

Can he be stopped?

“I’ve seen him get 60 in a game before, so I don’t know,” said Raptors wing RJ Barrett. “A lot of people try, but when he’s making those shots, like step-back threes, that’s normally a shot that you want somebody to take. He made eight threes, I think we obviously could have done a better job, but he made some tough ones."

To their credit, the Raptors weathered the early Doncic avalanche, even while playing without Kawhi Leonard (knee) and centre Jakob Poeltl, a late scratch due to bursitis in his left shoulder.

The Slovenian Doncic scored 16 points in the first quarter and went into halftime with 24 and the Lakers up by 13.

But the Raptors had shown flashes. A quick 8-0 run in the second quarter cut the Lakers' lead to five before consecutive threes from Los Angeles squashed that attempt.

In the second half, the Raptors trimmed back their turnovers to three after the 12 they made in the first half yielded 18 Lakers points. With Doncic on the bench to start the fourth with five fouls, the Raptors took a run, even though they were down by 22.

An 18-5 stretch sparked by Barrett (22 points, 10 rebounds, five assists) cut the lead to nine before Doncic came back in. He scored in the post immediately, beating a double-team from Barnes and Immanuel Quickley, and then when he couldn’t beat the double-team to score, he lasered a pass cross-court that led to an easy lob dunk by Walker Kessler (16 points, 15 rebounds, three blocked shots). The centre was acquired by the Lakers, at great expense, in the off-season to give Doncic the lob threat he has traditionally thrived playing alongside.

Down 15 with 4:28 to play, Rajakovic pulled his starters but inadvertently gave Doncic one more chance to shine. The Raptors bench unit caught fire against their Lakers counterpoints — no one more than Jamison Battle, who scored 15 points in four minutes — and cut the Lakers lead to five with 44 seconds left.

Lakers head coach JJ Reddick had seen enough and brought his starters back in, including Doncic, who had already untied his shoes. Double-teamed under his own basket, Doncic threw a 60-foot pass to Kessler for a dunk and hit four free throws to seal it.

Beast mode.

Three-point Grange:

1. They love Mamu too: About halfway through last season, it was clear that the Raptors weren’t going to be able to keep Mamukelashvili. They didn’t have the flexibility under the salary cap to pay him what had earned. Enter the Lakers, who dropped four years and $52 million in his lap, and who could say no?

Through the first few weeks of the season, the Lakers are glad he said yes: “I think he's even better than I thought he was just from being around him every day,” said Reddick. “He's obviously also a fantastic human being, but you know the size, the skill … he's a really rare offensive player because he's an advantage creator in so many ways. If he's guarded by a five and he can pick and pop into space, that's an advantage creation. He's really good at follows and touch rolls so that's an advantage creation. And then his 0.5 decision-making and his shooting ability and finishing ability … he's an advantage finisher, and then, on top of that, he's also a connector. There's very few offensive players that are all three of those things.”

2. Mamu says thanks: Before joining the Raptors, Mamukelashvili had never been part of an NBA rotation. He was given steady minutes for the first time and established himself and will always feel a certain way about his time in Toronto as a result.

“I'm grateful. I'll never forget that,” he said. “Darko and the whole Raptors organization gave me a possibility to be here today. And even though it didn't work out with them (contract-wise), I'm so grateful that they gave me that chance to go out there and showcase what I can do and what type of player I am.”

3. Another Poeltl setback: It looked like the Austrian centre had turned the corner after a poor start to the season with his 12-point, 11-rebound double-double against Orlando on Friday, but then Sunday he woke up with a wonky left shoulder, went through his pre-game warm-up and then determined the range-of-motion limitations from what has been diagnosed as bursitis made him unable to play. He’ll be re-evaluated Monday before the Raptors play the Clippers on the second game of their four-game road trip.