Luka Dončić’s brutally honest confession on a trip to LA

LOS ANGELES – After defeating the Toronto Raptors at home on Sunday, 110-93, Los Angeles Lakers will embark on an eight-game road trip, their longest of the season. They will next see their home court on February 5 tough schedule for the Lakerswhich was accelerated by the annual Grammy Awards. Not ideal, but like a Lakers star Luka Dončić that said, it’s just something the team has to deal with.

After the Lakers’ win against the Raptors, Luka Doncic talked about how a grueling away schedule is part of the job.

We are paid for this,” Doncic said. “That will not be an excuse. There will be a lot of travel, but this is what we get paid for, and I like that.”

On this road trip, three of the Lakers’ nine games will be against teams over .500 in the Denver Nuggets, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks. Another one of those teams, the LA Clippers, were the hottest team in the leaguewinning 12 of their last 15 games. But even with a few games against likely lottery teams, no game will be easy.

At the official halfway point of the season with the Lakers having played exactly 41 games, they have an almost identical home and away record. They are 13-8 on the road and 12-8 at home. With each of these next nine games, the Lakers don’t have any back-to-back sets, but only have one day of rest between each game.

For Lakers head coach JJ Redick, the compressed schedule is somewhat a result of the NBA Cup schedule.

“I’m not blaming anything, but this cup tournament in the season, with this break, it’s just created a very unbalanced cadence of games,” Redick said. “Outside of the All-Star break, I think our next two-day break between games is the end of March or something like that. So you kind of have no choice but to prioritize rest and recovery.”

The The Lakers’ health was a little better on Sunday when Doncic, Deandre Ayton and Jackson Hayes returned to the lineup, allowing Redick to extend the rotation to keep players fresh. But Doncic’s injuries will be something to monitor during the trip. After the win against the Raptors, Doncic admitted that it’s just something he has to play through for now.

“It’s okay, not bad,” said Doncic. “Obviously I’m going to try to get through it.”