Sports
Austin Reaves and new-look Lakers are encouraged but can’t beat NBA-best Cavaliers
The Lakers were again buried under an avalanche of Cleveland Cavaliers three-pointers, the spacing and the gaps on the court pulling the Lakers’ defense to all corners before it eventually snapped under tension.
The result was the same, but the process and team the Cavaliers beat Tuesday night at Crypto.com Arena in the final game of 2024 was fundamentally different from the one they blew out on Oct. 30 in Cleveland.
The version of the Lakers that got smoked in Cleveland was the one trying to get the most out of a formula that had shown it has a ceiling, losing to the Denver Nuggets during the previous two postseasons. It was one that hoped a core of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Austin Reaves and D’Angelo Russell paired with a new coach could find another gear, another level.
This week the Lakers decided that vision wouldn’t end well. This week the Lakers, at the very least, fundamentally changed.
Laker Austin Reaves drives to the basket against the Cavaliers during the fourth quarter at Crypto.com Arena Tuesday.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
While the team with the NBA’s best record swatted every Lakers push away, usually with some combination of backbreaking threes from Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley or reserve Max Strus, the Lakers showed glimpses of the ways they’ll be different. For better or worse? That remains to be seen.
Reaves, again seeing his volume of shots spike with Russell now playing for the Brooklyn Nets, led the Lakers with 35 points and 10 assists, bouncing back from a bad first shift. Davis had 28 points and 13 rebounds. And James, playing for the first time since turning 40, scored 23.
But Cleveland took 11 more threes than the Lakers and made nine more. They scored 24 points off offensive rebounds to the Lakers’ 12. And, despite playing Monday in San Francisco, they set the tempo and physicality early as the Lakers quickly trailed by double digits.
Dorian Finney-Smith played 21 minutes in his Lakers debut, scoring on a putback dunk but coming up empty on his other three shots. Shake Milton, playing because guard Gabe Vincent missed Tuesday’s game because of an oblique injury, hit a pair of threes in 10 minutes, but the Lakers’ second unit without Russell was badly outscored 32-12.
Cleveland (29-4), looking very much like a fully-formed team as the calendar flips over to 2025, managed to have five players with at least 15 points led by 27 by Jarrett Allen.
“We certainly had our chances. And I really believe this against teams as good as Cleveland: You have to play close to perfect basketball,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “They’re not gonna let you beat them. They’re not gonna beat themselves.”
The way forward for the Lakers seems like it’s going to have a lot to do with Reaves, the backcourt leader and primary ballhandler in Redick’s offense. That shift, which looked fully realized for the first time in a Christmas win against the Golden State Warriors, got cemented with a 26-point, 16-assist game against the Sacramento Kings that helped the Lakers decide it was OK to trade Russell for Finney-Smith and Milton.
Tuesday, the Lakers got off to a pretty rough start, with Reaves turning the ball over three times in the first six minutes on offense and committing a pair of bad fouls on defense, the Cavaliers going up by as many as 15 in the first quarter.
Laker Rui Hachimura has the ball stripped away by Cavalier Max Struss, right, as Sam Merrill tries to grab the ball at Crypto.com Arena Tuesday.
(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
“Are you saying I was bad in the first five minutes?” Reaves said in response to a question about his start. “[Because] yeah, I was. Great question. You make good plays, you make bad plays. Unfortunately, I came out and made some really bad plays.
“And I knew that, if we wanted to claw our way back into it and give ourselves an opportunity, then I had to be better.”
He was — he had only one more turnover, tied his career high for points and finished one rebound shy of a triple-double.
“He’s gonna get a lot of opportunities to play on and off ball with actions on it in both ways,” Redick said. “There’s a nature to his game that you have to be willing to live with some of his stuff because of the way he attacks and the change of pace and the quick decisions and the quick bursts, like there’s gonna be some of that and you have to live with that. It’s sort of the unforced stuff [where he] will grow.”
His teammates say they’re on board.
“What’d he have, 36 tonight? 35? … looked good to me,” Davis said. “He’s a hooper. I mean obviously he has a little bit more on his plate with ballhandling responsibilities when Gabe is out and when LeBron is out of the game, but he’s used to it. He’s been in the league long enough now where he knows how to run the point guard position. So it’s going to be more reps. He’s ready for it, and we got the utmost confidence in him to run the point.”
The Lakers, an organization not built on moral victories, left their locker room knowing that a couple of open threes that that rattled in and out might’ve made a difference. There were other issues — namely on defense, where the Lakers were too often out of position and too late to challenge at the three-point line and at the rim. And they were not good enough there to make up for the disadvantage their three-point volume and disparity created.
“Well, we just got to defend. I mean, obviously, we could shoot more threes, but our key to winning will be the defense. And [if] we’re not going to shoot more threes, than we have to defend, which we’ve been doing as of late,” Davis said. “I don’t think we need to jack more threes just to compete with other teams. If our defense is there, we’re running teams off the line, holding them into one shot. We did our job and now we go down and try to score.”
The Lakers think they have the blueprint to start winning games like this, to put themselves in the right positions by the end of the season. Of course, they’ve thought it before too — and they just decided that version of the roster isn’t good enough.
These Lakers (18-14) weren’t good enough either Tuesday. But, as with Reaves, there’s time and room to grow.
“We’re trending in the right direction. Tonight was a good night for us. We just missed a ton of shots. Wide-open looks that we missed. We make half of those, it’s a different game. So, I like where our ballclub is,” Davis said. “… I think we could definitely be better on both ends of the floor, but I’m not disappointed where we are right now.”
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The face of baseball will not be at Tuesday’s All-Star Game.
Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his start on Friday as the Los Angeles Dodgers said he will also miss the Midsummer Classic with what the team called left knee irritation.
Ohtani, for obvious reasons, has become an All-Star Game fixture. He has earned the honor in each of the past five seasons and made his first start in 2021.
Starting pitcher Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up before the MLB game against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 03, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images) (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
The two-way phenom is on his way to winning his fifth MVP award in his last six seasons as he is hitting .290 with a .939 OPS and pitching to a minuscule 1.79 ERA, the second-lowest in the sport among pitchers with 80-plus innings. His OPS is also the seventh-best mark in the league.
The Dodgers said Ohtani will be the team’s designated hitter up until the break, but he will “have some interventions on his knee to put him in the best position for the second half of the season.”
Ohtani dealt with knee issues earlier in the season.
It is certainly a big hit for the game as the other face of the sport, Aaron Judge, will miss the game due to a fractured rib that has kept him out since late May.
Shohei Ohtani #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers gets ready in the on deck circle against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on June 01, 2026 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Norm Hall/Getty Images) (Norm Hall/Getty Images)
DODGERS WILL AGAIN VISIT WHITE HOUSE TO CELEBRATE WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONSHIP, OFFICIAL SAYS
Ohtani hit 99 home runs combined in 2024 and 2025, leading the National League with a 1.025 OPS in that span. Ohtani did not pitch in 2024 after elbow surgery but returned to the bump last year and owned a 2.87 ERA and 11.9 K/9, a figure he also put up in 2022 that led the American League.
The “Japanese Babe Ruth” is the only player in MLB history to have 300-plus plate appearances and 40-plus innings in six separate seasons (Ruth only did it twice and never stole 50 bases), and he has more than excelled at both.
Shohei Ohtani pitches for the Los Angeles Dodgers against the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on May 13, 2026. (Gary A. Vasquez/Imagn Images)
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Ohtani is not hitting like he has in the past, but certainly the best pitching performance of his career will make up for it. He “only” has 20 homers and 56 RBI this season.
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If Mikel Merino is sleeping, please don’t wake him. If the last week has been a dream, he’d just as soon keep dreaming.
Because on Friday, for the second time in five days, Merino came off the bench for the final five minutes of a World Cup knockout game and scored the winning goal, the latest lifting Spain to a 2-1 victory over Belgium and into next week’s semifinal against France in Arlington, Texas.
“Not even in my wildest dreams could I have imagined what’s happening right now, right?” Merino said in Spanish. “Honestly, it’s crazy.”
How crazy? Merino has played less than 10 minutes in the last two games and has two goals. He’s taken four shots in the World Cup and put two of them in the back of the net, the first in stoppage time to beat Portugal in the Round of 16 and in the 88th minute Friday to beat Belgium in a quarterfinal and extend Spain’s unbeaten to streak to 36 games.
“I don’t really even know what to say. I still can’t quite believe it,” Merino said.
Yet Spain’s final substitution, which brought on Merino in the 86th minute, wasn’t the only one that figured heavily in the result. Fifteen minutes earlier Belgian coach Rudi Garcia sent backup goalkeeper Senne Lammens on for Thibaut Courtois — not by choice, by necessity.
The dropoff in talent wasn’t great — Lammens started 32 times for Manchester United this season — but the difference in experience was. Courtois was playing in his 21st World Cup game, second-most all-time, and he had been brilliant up to then.
But he tweaked a muscle making a save minutes earlier and dropped to the turf just before the second-half hydration break. After being attended to by the team’s trainers, he tried to continue but couldn’t, eventually hobbling to the sideline and collapsing on the bench in tears.
“We didn’t want his injury to get worse. That’s why I subbed him off,” Garcia said.
“It’s part and parcel of high-level sport. You need to be concentrated, 100% focused, and need to be able to perform. I did not want to put players on the pitch who were not 100%.”
The margin between Belgium and Spain, after all, is a small one, even if the teams took completely different routes to the quarterfinal.
Spain, which hadn’t gone past the Round of 16 in a World Cup since 2010 when it won its only title, had gone a record six games and 609 minutes without allowing a World Cup goal, dating to the group stage of the last tournament four years ago.
Spain midfielder Mikel Merino scores off a rebound in front of Belgium goalkeeper Senne Lammens during the second half of Spain’s 2-1 quarterfinal win in the World Cup quarterfinals Friday at SoFi Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
You could binge watch two seasons of “Abbott Elementary” in that time.
But if Spain, the reigning European champion, and goalkeeper Unai Simón were the immovable objects, Belgium, playing in the quarterfinals for the third time in four World Cups, was an unstoppable force. With 12 goals in the last three games, it entered the quarterfinals with the third-most goals in the tournament. And no team had taken more shots.
Spain struck first, with Fabián Ruiz giving La Roja a 1-0 lead with his first goal of the tournament in the 30th minute. The sequence started with Pedro Porro sending a cross into the box for Dani Olmo, whose shot was parried away by Courtois. But Ruiz pounced on the rebound and deflected a shot off defender Timothy Castagne and into the back of the net.
In any other game of this tournament, that would have been enough for Simón. But not against Belgium, which ended Spain’s shutout streak in the 41st minute on a brilliant header from Charles De Keterlaere, who shielded Pau Cubarsí with his body and one-hopped a Castagne cross past a flat-footed Simón for his third goal in two games.
“The record and the milestones are there,” Spanish coach Luis de la Fuente said of his goalkeeper’s record streak. “It’s been decades since the last record was set. And perhaps somebody will break the clean-sheet record.
“But it’s going to be many, many years before that happens.”
Belgium opened the game up a bit when Garcia brought Romelu Lukaku, the country’s all-time leading scorer, on at the hour mark. But Courtois was called to make two saves in the next three minutes and came up lame after the second.
Shorty after he came off, De la Fuente summoned Merino over.
“He didn’t say much to me,” Merino said. “He told me I was coming in as the No. 10. And then, as the game was coming to an end, he told me I was incredible.
“Those are the only two things he said to me.”
The first shot Lammens faced came moments later, when Cubarsí put a one-hop shot on goal from distance. The keeper dove to his right to stop it with both hands, but the ball skipped just before it reached he and Lammens had trouble with the rebound, pushing it toward the edge of the six-yard box for Merino, who tapped it in.
“Unfortunately, to beat a team of this caliber, you need luck on your side,” Garcia, the Belgian coach, said. And the stars didn’t align for us.”
So while Belgium goes home, Spain goes to Texas for Tuesday’s semifinal with France, the only team in the world ranked ahead of it.
“Ever since the World Cup started, everyone has been waiting for this match,” Spanish wunderkind Lamine Yamal said. “I’ve been really looking forward to it. To me, they’re the two best teams in the World Cup.
“If anyone can take on France with confidence, it’s us.”
Especially if Merino keeps dreaming.
Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero contributed to this story.
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Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar’s feud will come to a head at SummerSlam in August, and the showdown has the potential to be WWE’s match of the year.
Femi beat Lesnar at WrestleMania 42 and led to “The Beast Incarnate” deciding to retire – at least for a moment – at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Lesnar made a dramatic return a few weeks later, challenging and beating Femi at Clash in Italy.
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Oba Femi looks on during Monday Night RAW at Allstate Arena on July 6, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois. (Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
At SummerSlam, Femi and Lesnar will do battle inside a Hell in a Cell.
WWE Hall of Famer John Bradshaw Layfield called the next meeting between Femi and Lesnar a “generational matchup.”
“I’ve never seen anything like Oba – well, I have. I’ve seen Brock,” he told Fox News Digital. “It’s very much the carbon copy of Brock coming in. Brock coming in was like, oh my God, who is this guy? The guy can even talk, and he’s gonna be one of the biggest stars in wrestling. Not only could he talk, he’s a really smart guy. Brock became one of the biggest draws in professional wrestling. He came one of the biggest draws in UFC. It’s an unbelievable story, and now you got somebody who can rival that character.
Brock Lesnar in action against Oba Femi during “Monday Night Raw” at TD Garden on March 23, 2026, in Boston, Massachusetts. (Michael Owens/WWE via Getty Images)
“This Oba Femi comes out with the silly little walk he does. Everyone kinda does it, it’s like The Bushwackers. But the whole arena does it. I was in Vegas and I didn’t want to go to the matches and deal with the traffic and deal with the backstage area, and so I kinda just watched it in a sports bar. I stood in the back where nobody could recognize me, and as soon as Oba came out, the entire sports bar was sitting there doing that Oba Femi dance. The guy is just unbelievably over.
“I really think that somewhere in the NFL this year, you’re going to see an entire NFL arena doing this dance. You’re gonna have somebody like Saquon Barkley or ‘King’ (Derrick Henry) or some of these guys do this dance, and it’s infectious. Once one of them does, one of these great running backs or wide receivers, or somebody scores a touchdown, that’s when I think you’re gonna see entire arenas doing it. I just think Oba Femi is lightning in a bottle and Brock has always been that way. This is, to me, a generational matchup.”
Brock Lesnar and Oba Femi face off during WrestleMania 42: Night 2 at Allegiant Stadium on April 19, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Georgiana Dallas/WWE via Getty Images)
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SummerSlam will take place on Aug. 1 and 2 at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
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