Toronto Raptors vs Los Angeles Lakers Prediction, Odds and Picks for Today, 01/18/26

Toronto couldn’t do much in its last game against James Harden, who went for 31 points and 10 assists. The city remains the same for Sunday, but the venue changes as the Raptors head to Crypto.com Arena to take on the Lakers. Losing a game in which they led by 14 and for 76% of play is typical of the Raptors, who just haven’t been able to find consistency lately — exchanging wins and losses for the past week. They enter Sunday’s game as slight underdogs, and against the Lakers they have won just 3 times in 10 meetings.

The Lakers also got smacked in their last game, as they fell on the road to Portland 132-116 last night. It was a game to forget, which was expected once they announced that Luka Doncic would not be playing. Defensively they couldn’t do much even against a Blazers team without Deni Avdija, allowing them to shoot 52% from the field. Grabbing only 27 rebounds in a game of that magnitude should raise some concern in the camp of head coach JJ Redick. LeBron James did put up 20 pts, 9 rebounds and 8 assists in the loss. It will be interesting to see if he plays in this back-to-back scenario. I’m willing to bet he does — after all, it is one of his favorite opponents ever.

Assuming Luka Doncic comes back (which he should, as his groin issue was just a minor, but he decided to skip the Portland game) along with Deandre Ayton and Jaxson Hayes, the Lakers will be in much better shape. The spread being set at just 1.5 points tells us that even the oddsmakers are expecting a close game. If that’s the case then I’ll go with the team that has won 13 of 14 games in the clutch this season. Let’s back the Lakers.

Raptors vs Lakers prediction: Los Angeles -1 (-110) available at time of publishing. Playable to -2.

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