Lakers at Raptors
The Toronto Raptors dominated the first two games of their road trip but closed the three-game set out in an ugly loss at Cleveland marred by a fighting incident involving forward Serge Ibaka. Ibaka will not be available when the Raptors attempt to bounce back against the visiting Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday.
Ibaka was suspended three games by the NBA on Tuesday for instigating a fight with Cleveland Cavaliers forward Maquese Chriss in which multiple punches were thrown in the third quarter of Toronto's 126-101 loss. "It's an emotional game. Sometimes things happen," Raptors center Marc Gasol, who will see an increase in playing time with Ibaka out, told reporters. "Contact sports and you say the wrong things, emotions build up and sometimes it explodes." The Lakers stumbled out of the postseason race while dropping 11 of 14 games but started the road trip with a 123-107 win over the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday. "Obviously, I would love for the team to be in the postseason," Los Angeles superstar LeBron James told reporters after the win. "Even if I'm not a part of it, the postseason I've always loved. But right now, it's not the hand I was dealt, so you play the hand that you were dealt until the dealer shuffles the cards and you're dealt another hand and can do that."
TV: 8 p.m. ET, TNT, Spectrum SportsNet (Los Angeles), Sportsnet One (Toronto)
ABOUT THE LAKERS (31-36): Los Angeles is trying to gain as much as it can the rest of the season in experience and maturity, with James leading the way. "We're still playing playoff teams," James said. "For our young guys to be able to play playoff teams on the road, it's very key for their development still. We have an opportunity on this road trip. We go into Toronto our next game. We go into Detroit, who's a playoff team. We go into Milwaukee at the end of the trip. All playoff teams, all good teams. Those games will be like playoff games, if we want them to be. They'll get an opportunity to learn, and I get an opportunity to play with them, so we can take that out of it for sure." James scored 36 points on 15-of-23 shooting in 33 minutes Tuesday while second-year forward Kyle Kuzma added 21 points.
ABOUT THE RAPTORS (48-20): Toronto owns the second-best record in the NBA despite Monday's ugly loss and is three games behind first-place Milwaukee with 14 games left in the regular season. Kawhi Leonard led three scorers in double figures with 25 points on Monday for the Raptors, who acknowledged after the loss that they didn't take the lowly Cavaliers seriously enough and will need to guard against that with home dates against the Lakers and NBA-worst New York Knicks sandwiched around a trip to Detroit on Sunday. "We didn't play up to the level we should have played to, we played down," All-Star point guard Kyle Lowry told reporters after scoring 14 points against Cleveland. "They played their butts off tonight, good for them."
BUZZER BEATERS
1. Gasol managed two points on 1-of-6 shooting Monday and scored in single digits in each of the last four contests.
2. Lakers C Tyson Chandler (neck) and swingman Lance Stephenson (toe) are questionable for Thursday.
3. Ibaka scored a career-high 34 points and Lowry collected 21 points and 15 assists in Toronto's 121-107 win at Los Angeles on Nov. 4.