Down 20 in Vegas, the Warriors Turned the Lakers Over 29 Times and Ran Away With a 101-89 Preseason Win

LAS VEGAS

Preseason basketball is supposed to be forgettable, and for one half on Tuesday night at T-Mobile Arena, the Los Angeles Lakers made sure it would be — for the wrong team. Then the second half started, the Lakers stopped being able to complete a possession, and the Golden State Warriors turned a 20-point deficit into a 101-89 win that felt less like an exhibition and more like a warning about ball security. It counts for nothing in the standings. It was still the loudest preseason statement either team has made this month.

Start with the shape of the collapse. Los Angeles led 63-50 at halftime and stretched the margin to 70-50 in the third quarter. From there, according to VAVEL’s recap of the game, the Lakers scored 26 points in the entire second half — 13 in the third quarter and 13 in the fourth — while Golden State outscored them 51-26 and turned defense into a fast break that never stopped coming. The Warriors finished with 20 steals. The Lakers finished with 29 turnovers, a number that would embarrass a summer league roster, let alone a team with real ambitions in the Western Conference.

Reaves Ran the First Half

None of this looked likely while Austin Reaves was conducting the Lakers’ offense. With Luka Dončić given the night off by coach JJ Redick, Reaves took the keys and, according to City Champs Media’s account, had 23 points by halftime before a step-back banked three early in the third pushed the lead to 70-50. He finished with 28 points and seven assists in 25 minutes. The other side of his line tells the rest of the story: seven turnovers, as the Warriors’ pressure found him again and again once the game turned.

The Lakers’ other first-half headline was a debut. Center Walker Kessler, acquired to anchor the middle, started his first game in a Lakers uniform and, as SportsGrid reported, finished with 11 points, nine rebounds, an assist, a steal and a block in roughly 16 minutes — cutting, tipping and dunking his way into the rotation picture before halftime. Redick, in reporting carried by The Athletic, praised the relentlessness of Kessler’s motor. For 24 minutes, the short-handed Lakers looked like a team that had its answers.

Then the Ball Started Disappearing

Golden State’s comeback was not built on a shooting eruption. The Warriors shot under 40 percent from the field themselves and made only 28 percent of their threes. It was built on possession theft at industrial scale: 29 Lakers turnovers converted into extra chances, 15 offensive rebounds, and a second-half rebounding edge that Steve Kerr himself flagged afterward — two offensive boards in the first half, 13 in the second. Los Angeles, meanwhile, shot 26.5 percent from three-point range (9-for-34) and watched every clean look dry up as its ballhandlers got sped up, trapped and stripped.

The rookie did as much of the speeding up as anyone. Yaxel Lendeborg, Golden State’s first-year forward, poured in 17 points with five rebounds and four assists, and his hustle on the offensive glass helped ignite the rally. Brandin Podziemski matched him with 17 points. Stephen Curry, in a deliberately light 23-minute night, scored 11 and never had to play hero — the comeback was a collective ambush, run by the young legs while the veterans watched the lead flip.

Kerr Was Not Buying Any of It

The most honest review of the night came from the winning coach. Fadeaway World’s account of Kerr’s postgame remarks captured a coach in no mood to celebrate: he liked the effort and the energy, he said, but called the execution lacking, pointed at a second quarter full of mindless turnovers by his own team — Golden State committed 20 giveaways of its own and missed 10 free throws — and concluded that the Warriors are, in his words, not anywhere close to where they want to be. Associated Press reporting out of Las Vegas carried the same verdict: the vision is clear, the players are committed, and the execution, at this point, is scattered.

That framing matters more than the comeback for Golden State, which improved to 3-2 in the preseason while playing without several frontcourt pieces. A team learning a more organized offense — Kerr has spent camp preaching consistent spots and consistent cuts over improvisation — just won a game with its defense and its effort while its offense sputtered. Coaches will take the lesson and the win, in that order.

What a Preseason Game Can and Cannot Say

The caveats are real, and both benches know them. Dončić did not play. Rotations were experimental, minutes were managed, and neither team showed anything it plans to run in May. Sports Illustrated’s coverage of the game treated it the same way: a data point, not a verdict. But some preseason facts travel. Twenty-nine turnovers is a habit problem, not a scheme problem, and the Lakers have one preseason game left — Friday, October 16, against the Denver Nuggets — to look like a team that values the ball before the games start counting with their October 21 opener.

For the Warriors, the travel item is depth. When a rookie and a third-year guard can outscore every Laker not named Reaves while Curry coasts, the rotation questions Kerr faces look like the good kind. Vegas got a show, the Lakers got a film session they will not enjoy, and the preseason got its strangest box score of the fall. Follow the rest of camp on Previously’s sports hub, catch up on how this matchup was set up, and read about Podziemski’s new five-year extension before opening night.