{"id":29381,"date":"2026-05-11T06:23:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/nba-play-offs-la-lakers-one-game-from-exit-as-thunder-and-cavs-win\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T06:23:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T06:23:36","slug":"nba-play-offs-la-lakers-one-game-from-exit-as-thunder-and-cavs-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/nba-play-offs-la-lakers-one-game-from-exit-as-thunder-and-cavs-win\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA play-offs: LA Lakers one game from exit as Thunder and Cavs win"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The Oklahoma City Thunder moved to the brink of another Western Conference Finals appearance with a dominant 131-108 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers to take a commanding lead in the play-offs.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Lakers now face the daunting task of needing to become the first team in NBA history to overturn a 3-0 deficit., external<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander played his part for the top-seeded Thunder with 23 points and nine assists, but team-mate Ajay Mitchell was generally more accurate in his shooting and added 24 points and 10 assists.<\/p>\n

The Lakers had 19 points from 41-year-old LeBron James, but he was not at his best as a team that again competed without the injured Luka Doncic proved unable to stem the tide in a one-sided series.<\/p>\n

The Thunder were NBA champions last year<\/a> and look the team to beat once more. Gilgeous-Alexander had his highest-scoring game of the series despite missing nine of his first 11 shots. His form in the play-offs has been down on his return in the regular season, when he averaged 31.1 points per game.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, I haven’t been my best in performances, but I think I’ve been able to help the team win and that’s most important,” said Gilgeous-Alexander.<\/p>\n

“As long as we win. If the rest of the play-off run or the rest of my career look like what it looked like the past few games, I’d be OK with it because we won games.”<\/p>\n

In the Eastern Conference, Donovan Mitchell produced a 35-point performance to lead the Cleveland Cavaliers to a 116-109 win over the Detroit Pistons.<\/p>\n

Victory at Rocket Arena was vital for the fourth-seeded Cavaliers, who cut the Pistons’ series lead to 2-1.<\/p>\n

Cleveland built a 16-point lead by half-time and, despite a Detroit surge led by Cade Cunningham’s 27-point triple-double, featuring 10 rebounds and 10 assists, Mitchell’s late free throws secured the win.<\/p>\n

The New York Knicks are a game away from progress after a 108-94 win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday, and the San Antonio Spurs lead the Minnesota Timberwolves 2-1 after a 115-108 win.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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The Oklahoma City Thunder moved to the brink of another Western Conference Finals appearance with a dominant 131-108 victory over the Los Angeles Lakers to take a commanding lead in the play-offs. The Lakers now face the daunting task of needing to become the first team in NBA history to overturn a 3-0 deficit., external […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29383,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29381\/revisions\/29383"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}