The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Portland Trail Blazers 124-118 tonight, and Luka Dončić scored 53 of those 124 points. That is the game: a six-point margin in which one player accounted for 43 percent of his team’s scoring, and in which the nine other Lakers who played combined for 71 points on 60 field goal attempts. The story grade is Dončić’s A. The second story is how little the rest of the rotation did with the possessions he did not use.
Fifty-Three Points, and a Six-Point Win
Luka Dončić — A. 53 points on 33 field goal attempts and 18 free throws in 38 minutes, which is 64.8 percent true shooting. Five rebounds, five assists, three turnovers, plus-16. His season rate coming in was 38.5 points a game, so this was his level and then some, and the efficiency held at a volume that usually breaks it. The scoring run that carried him past Michael Jordan’s eight-game mark has not cooled. An A is rare here, and it is not for the number alone — it is because a six-point win does not survive the removal of 53 points.
Walker Kessler — B+. 16 points on 10 shots, 7-of-10 from the floor and 2-of-3 at the line, with 12 rebounds — four of them offensive — two assists, one turnover and a plus-8 across 37 minutes. His season rates were 14.4 points on 71.8 percent shooting and 10.2 rebounds, so he cleared both. What keeps it from an A-range grade is the other half of his job: no blocks against a 2.67 per-game rate, and five personal fouls.
Ziaire Williams — B. 8 points on five shots, 2-of-4 from three, with three rebounds, an assist, two steals and one turnover in 20 minutes, plus-8. Raw totals understate it: that is 0.40 points per minute against a season rate of 0.42. He did his job at his level, efficiently, and asked nothing extra of the offense.
Sandro Mamukelashvili — B. 7 points on six shots, 1-of-3 from three, three rebounds, an assist, a block, zero turnovers and zero fouls in 20 minutes. Slightly under his 9.0-point and 4.6-rebound season rates, but the clean sheet matters at this grade: no fouls and no giveaways from a backup big in a game decided by six. His plus-19 ties for the best figure on the page and it is not why he is here — it belongs to the lineups he shared, not to him.
Volume Is Not Efficiency
Austin Reaves — C+. 25 points, and they cost 22 field goal attempts and eight free throws: 8-of-22 from the floor, 1-of-8 from three, 49.0 percent true shooting. Set that against the season line — 23.3 points on 53.1 percent shooting and 42.9 percent from three — and the scoring total is the only part of tonight that matched his level. Two assists against a 5.0 per-game rate, four steals, and a minus-6 that made him the only Laker over 30 minutes to finish in the negative. The four steals and the perfect 8-of-8 at the line are real, and they are why this is not a C. But the offense that has been humming did not hum through him tonight.
Jake LaRavia — C. 7 points on five shots with 2-of-3 from three, undercut by 1-of-4 at the free throw line, and then a rebounding night well clear of his own rate: eight boards, five of them offensive, against a 3.4 per-game average. Three assists, one turnover. The problem is the rest of the line — six personal fouls and a minus-16, the worst mark on the team by six points.
Half a grade down: six personal fouls and a foul-out in a game decided by six, which the production line does not price in on its own.
Fifty-Five Minutes, Four Points
Matisse Thybulle — D+. 2 points in 24 minutes as a starter, on one field goal attempt. One. Add two rebounds, zero assists, two turnovers and a minus-8, against a season line of 8.0 points on 44.4 percent shooting. Three steals — above his 1.67 per-game rate, and the best thing he did — are what keep this off the floor of the scale. A starter who attempts one shot in 24 minutes has handed his possessions to someone else, and tonight that worked only because of who was holding them.
Quentin Grimes — D. 2 points on three shots, 0-of-2 from three, and then nothing: zero rebounds, zero assists, one turnover, two steals, 20 minutes. His season rates were 8.2 points, 3.0 rebounds and 2.7 assists, so he cleared none of the three. The plus-19 he shares with Mamukelashvili is the reason this is a D and not worse — the lineups he was in won their minutes — but a 20-minute line with no rebound and no assist in it is a line the Lakers were worse for.
Collin Sexton — D-. Scoreless on four field goal attempts in 11 minutes, with no rebounds, one assist, a minus-10 and five personal fouls. Five fouls in eleven minutes is one every 2.2 minutes on the floor, and it is the single most expensive thing any Laker did tonight short of fouling out. He averaged 9.8 points coming in, so the zero is the outlier rather than the pattern — but the fouls are not a scoring slump, and they are the reason this sits at the bottom of the page.
Under the Floor, and Out of the Rotation
Adou Thiero played seven minutes — under our ten-minute floor, so no letter — and made them count: 4 points on 2-of-4, four offensive rebounds and two assists, even at plus-minus zero. It is the most productive seven minutes on the page.
Kevon Looney, Jaden Hardy, Jarred Vanderbilt and Lawson Lovering did not play.
How We Grade
| Grade | What it means |
|---|---|
| A | Won them the game |
| B | Did his job, at his level or better |
| C | Neutral — present, not decisive |
| D | They were worse for his minutes |
| F | Actively cost them the game |
Grades weigh production against opportunity and against each player’s own rate through 9 games, plus up to half a grade of judgment, noted where used.
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