Mamukelashvili hits five threes as Lakers beat Bucks for seventh straight win

The Los Angeles Lakers reached 11 wins before any other NBA team this season after beating the Milwaukee Bucks 123–112 at Fiserv Forum on Wednesday, 11 November. Luka Dončić scored 32 points and Sandro Mamukelashvili contributed 23 from the bench against his former team. Los Angeles led by two after one quarter, by 11 at half-time and by 21 entering the fourth. That progression explains the seventh straight win better than the final margin alone. Milwaukee recovered ten points in the last period after the Lakers had separated over the middle two.

Austin Reaves scored 18 before leaving with a left heel injury. Walker Kessler finished with ten points and 11 rebounds, and reserve guard Collin Sexton added ten. Milwaukee received 27 points and seven assists from Tyler Herro and 25 points from Jaime Jaquez Jr., according to the final box score. The Bucks fell to 1–11 with their eighth consecutive defeat. The Lakers improved to 11–2 with scoring from the perimeter, extra field-goal attempts and a bench performance that had already influenced the game before Reaves went out.

Dončić keeps the Lakers close enough to take over

The Bucks started with a 7–2 lead before a 9–0 Lakers run moved Los Angeles in front. The visitors went ahead by as many as nine in the first quarter but finished the period up just 30–28. Dončić scored 16 of those first 30 points and made five of nine shots. The early lead therefore depended heavily on his ability to produce while the home side was still scoring at nearly the same rate. It was the quarter in which one player accounted for the largest part of the Lakers’ output, and the quarter in which their advantage remained smallest.

Los Angeles won the second quarter 31–22 despite Dončić adding only three points in the period. The Associated Press put Reaves and Mamukelashvili at 15 apiece by half-time. Their combined 30 points accounted for nearly half of the Lakers’ 61 and helped give the visitors an alternative while Milwaukee was still in the game. One of those players started and handled the ball. The other came from the bench and could space the floor. The change in who was scoring was important because Los Angeles stretched a narrow margin without another double-digit quarter from its leading scorer.

Herro scored 11 of Milwaukee’s 22 in the second quarter, according to Field Level Media, and the Bucks made two of 11 three-point attempts in the period. The split exposed a problem for the hosts. Individual creation kept points coming, but the rest of the offence could not match the number of successful possessions Los Angeles put together before half-time. That made a close first quarter a less useful guide to how the rest of the game was moving. Milwaukee went into the break needing to regain 11 points even after having kept Dončić’s own second-quarter total low.

Seven third-quarter threes change the margin

Los Angeles shot seven for 11 from three-point range in the third, with Matisse Thybulle scoring all eight of his points for the night in that quarter. The Lakers won it 33–23 and entered the fourth ahead 94–73. Their seven made threes generated 21 of their 33 points in the period. A comparable number of made two-pointers would have delivered seven fewer. That calculation captures the immediate value of the shotmaking in the middle of the game, when the Lakers turned a lead Milwaukee could still challenge into one that required several productive possessions in a row.

Reaves exited during that third quarter. He finished with five assists to go with his 18 points and made all five free throws. His departure removed one of the two players who had supplied most of the Lakers’ scoring outside Dončić in the first half. The lead still grew in the quarter, in part because other players were making shots from outside. His availability beyond Wednesday is a separate question from what happened in Milwaukee. The game report established the left heel problem and his exit, with a timetable for his return still to be determined.

Dončić finished with five rebounds and five assists and made five of 12 threes. In the fourth quarter he hit a long three while Kyle Kuzma fouled him, then completed the four-point play at the line after showing discomfort in his ankle. Field Level Media reported that he left the game with 4:25 remaining and the Lakers ahead by 24. The Bucks won the final period 39–29. That late scoring explains why the final margin returned to 11 even though the lead at the time Dončić came out was more than twice as large.

Mamukelashvili’s shooting mattered before the finish

Mamukelashvili made nine of 15 field-goal attempts, including five of eight from beyond the arc. Those five threes produced 15 of his 23 points and a third of all the Lakers’ makes from distance. His other four field goals came inside the arc, and he did not take a free throw. For a reserve who scored 15 before half-time, that shooting gave the Lakers a substantial contribution while the game was still close enough for each possession to affect the lead. It also gave Milwaukee a second five-three scorer to account for on the same night as Dončić.

The Bucks acquired Mamukelashvili’s draft rights in 2021 after Indiana selected him 54th. His time in Milwaukee came before spells with San Antonio and Toronto. He signed with Los Angeles in July 2026 after playing 80 games for the Raptors, averaging 11.2 points in 21.9 minutes and making 38.9 percent of his three-point attempts, according to the Lakers’ announcement. Those numbers explain why a performance built around his perimeter shooting fits the role he had already developed. The result was a notable return to Milwaukee, and the position he filled in the Lakers’ rotation had been taking shape for longer than one game.

He matched the 23 points he had scored off the bench against Atlanta two days earlier. The scoring routes differed even with the same total. The NBA game log records that he also made five threes on Monday, but added four made free throws and collected eight rebounds. In Milwaukee he needed no free throws and recorded three rebounds. For Los Angeles, two outings at the same scoring level, in different games and with different contributions elsewhere, help show where a reserve can ease pressure on the starters. Wednesday placed particular value on what he did while Reaves was still available and what his shooting left the team able to do after Reaves departed.

His performance also had a college reference point. Mamukelashvili spent four years at Seton Hall and made 79 starts in 115 games there, according to the Lakers. He was named Big East Player of the Year as a senior in 2021. Toronto, where he started 13 of 80 regular-season games last season, gave him a different workload. He scored 686 points as a reserve, the seventh-highest such season total in Raptors history according to Los Angeles. Those figures trace a change in usage across different stages of his career. A player who often started in college built a place in the NBA by producing regularly when coming into games already in progress.

Shot volume and the gap between the teams

The Lakers attempted 95 field goals to Milwaukee’s 81 and won the offensive-rebound count 19–14. Jake LaRavia went scoreless but took seven offensive rebounds and handed out six assists. Kessler grabbed four offensive boards and seven defensive ones. Extra chances help explain how the visitors made nine more field goals while shooting 46.3 percent against Milwaukee’s 43.2 percent. The difference between the shooting percentages alone was modest. The difference in how many attempts each team had gave those percentages more room to matter.

The game also showed how scoring and passing were distributed. The Lakers recorded 32 assists on 44 made field goals, including six by LaRavia and five by reserve Ziaire Williams. Williams added nine points on five shots, while Sexton had three assists alongside his ten points. Those contributions matter when a creator leaves early. A reserve can keep the ball moving, make a shot after the defence rotates or help a possession produce another attempt. The box score establishes that the Lakers had several players doing parts of that work. It cannot assign every assisted basket to a particular set or explain from the totals alone which lineup made it possible.

Milwaukee scored 29 points at the foul line to the Lakers’ 20. Herro and Jaquez combined for 18 made free throws in 19 attempts. That advantage offset part of the visitors’ scoring from the field. The arithmetic of the final score shows the limit of that recovery. Los Angeles had 103 points from field goals against Milwaukee’s 83, a gap of 20, and Milwaukee narrowed it by nine at the line. Even a home team that converted its free throws efficiently still needed to produce and defend more field-goal attempts to close what the Lakers had built.

Herro had missed the previous game with a knee problem. His seven assists and Jaquez’s 25 points gave the Bucks two productive sources of offence on his return. Milwaukee also scored 39 in the fourth. The middle two periods were the more demanding part of the review. Across those 24 minutes the Bucks scored 45 and allowed 64, and the second-quarter struggle from three and the Lakers’ third-quarter success came in succession. A stronger finish could trim the margin after those stretches. Winning the game would have required keeping at least one of them much closer.

For the Bucks, Jaquez’s work illustrates both the value and the limit of a strong reserve line. He grabbed five rebounds, handed out three assists and made all nine free throws. He and Herro accounted for 52 of Milwaukee’s 112 points. That is close to half the team’s total. The comparison with Los Angeles is instructive. Dončić and Mamukelashvili scored 55 between them, only three more, so the larger difference came from how many points the other players supplied. Los Angeles got 68 from the rest of its roster and Milwaukee 60. The result involved both teams’ leading scorers and a meaningful gap in the points behind them.

Milwaukee were scheduled to visit Orlando on Friday, 13 November, and Los Angeles to play at Phoenix on Sunday, 15 November. The Lakers take a seven-game winning streak into that trip and have recent evidence of scoring from both their starters and reserves. The Bucks have a narrower problem to address from Wednesday’s result. Herro’s return and Jaquez’s production gave them points, but the Lakers’ second chances and third-quarter shooting produced a gap those individual contributions could only partly offset. Milwaukee’s next game provides a new setting in which to test whether it can keep the margin manageable before the final period.