Luka Dončić put up 45 points, 15 rebounds, six assists, and five steals against Toronto on Sunday night. He hit eight threes. He went 13-for-13 at the line. He drew three charges, which, if you watched him in Dallas, is a sentence that sounds fake.

And with 43.7 seconds left, he was walking back to the scorer's table anyway.

That's the part of Lakers 131, Raptors 125 I can't shake. Not the stat line, which was ridiculous. It's that the best player in the building had to come back and babysit a game that was already over.

Forty Seconds Of Chaos

Dončić checked out with 2:28 left and the Lakers up 16. JJ Redick pulled Austin Reaves, Walker Kessler, and the rest of the starters at 1:43, still up 14. Normal stuff. Empty the bench, let the rookie get his debut, everybody goes home happy.

The group that finished was Quentin Grimes, Jarred Vanderbilt, Bronny James, Jaden Hardy, and Cameron Carr. Carr's a first-round pick who'd missed the first six games with an oblique injury. Those were his first NBA minutes, against a team that was pressing full court and grabbing everything in sight.

It went about how you'd guess. Jamison Battle hit two threes and a floater in an 18-second span. There was a botched inbounds play. There were missed free throws. Jaden Bradley finished an and-one, and just like that it was 125-120.

That's 11 Toronto points in roughly 40 seconds. Redick burned a timeout and sent Dončić, Reaves, Kessler, and Matisse Thybulle back out. Luka found Kessler for a dunk, made four free throws, and that was that.

Redick said afterward:

I won't make that mistake again. I'll leave the guys in.

This Wasn't Really A Two-Minute Problem

I get the frustration. But pinning this whole thing on a few deep reserves in garbage time would be a little too easy.

The Lakers led 104-82 after three quarters. Then Toronto scored 43 in the fourth. By the time Dončić came back with 7:15 left, that 22-point cushion was down to 12, and it slipped into single digits before he and Reaves ripped off a 9-1 run to calm everybody down. The Lakers turned it over 24 times on the night, and Toronto scored 30 points off those.

Redick had a theory on that.

When you play against these teams, it's literally grab and hold, foul, trap, foul.

He's not wrong about how teams defend now. But the Lakers' answer to that can't just be iso ball with the guy who already has 45.

And this didn't come out of nowhere. Two nights earlier, they were up 25 on Golden State in the first quarter and lost by 17. Luka scored 37 in that one and said:

Me first, I gotta be better.

Two huge leads, two meltdowns, three days.

The Workload Question

Here's why those 43.7 seconds bug me more than they probably should.

Last April, Dončić tweaked his hamstring in the first half of a 134-96 blowout loss to Oklahoma City, kept playing, and suffered a Grade 2 strain in the third quarter. He ended up missing the playoffs and the Lakers got swept by the Thunder in the second round. Redick's explanation at the time was that "the group wanted to go for it in the second half." Luka's, months later, said even more:

When it comes to my spirit of trying to win, I am just stubborn.

Stubborn is great when you're dropping 45. It's not so great when you sat out a game with back tightness last week, then played 35 minutes Sunday and 35 more Monday in a 21-point win over Miami. He's averaging 35.7 minutes and 38.3 points a night, and the Lakers are 6-2. All of that is fine, right up until it isn't.

The Fix Isn't "Leave The Guys In"

So what's the answer? I don't think it's Redick's. Keeping Luka out there for every possession of every win is how you end up winning in April.

The smarter move is to stop dumping a whole unit of guys with no real rotation minutes onto the floor at once, especially against a team that's already pressing. Stagger it. Pull Luka first, like Redick did, but keep an actual ball handler out there. Give Reaves one more minute. Leave Sandro Mamukelashvili in, since he had 11 points and zero turnovers. Get Carr his debut in the last 30 seconds, not the last 100.

The bigger fix is a non-Luka lineup that can survive the start of a fourth quarter without giving back 10 points of a lead. They beat the Clippers 103-87 without him last week, so it's in there somewhere. It just has to show up more often.

Luka's going to keep doing the 45-15-5 thing. He even enjoyed the defensive love Sunday night. When a reporter passed along some praise for his D, he smiled and said:

Finally.

The Lakers just need to make sure he isn't the one cleaning up every mess on the way out.

All stats courtesy of NBA.com.

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