The Los Angeles Lakers cannot catch a break.
Less than 24 hours after Luka Doncic was ruled out for the remainder of the regular season with a Grade 2 hamstring strain, the Lakers absorbed another devastating blow as Austin Reaves has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury.
“Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury and will be out for the remainder of the regular season,” the team announced. However, the Lakers didn’t give a timetable for Reaves’ return.
Both Doncic and Reaves were hurt in Thursday’s 139–96 blowout loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder—a brutal night that has effectively wiped out the momentum the Lakers had spent all of March building. Los Angeles won 15 of 17 games that month to climb to third in the Western Conference. Now, with five regular season games remaining and the playoffs around the corner, they are suddenly a very different team.
Hole Is Enormous Without Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves
The Lakers were built around Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves as the primary engines of their offense. Doncic arrived in Los Angeles as the centerpiece of one of the most stunning trades in recent memory and immediately delivered, helping drive that March surge. Reaves, meanwhile, had grown into one of the league’s most reliable secondary creators — a player who made everything around him easier.
Both are now gone, at least for now. No timetable has been given for Reaves’ possible return, and Doncic’s Grade 2 strain puts his playoff availability firmly in doubt as well. The Lakers, sitting at 50–27, still have their seeding to protect over the final five games—starting with a road trip to Dallas—but the real concern is what this team looks like when the postseason actually begins.
The Ball Is LeBron James’s Court
With the injuries to Austin Reaves and Luka Doncic, all eyes are now on LeBron James.
At 41, LeBron has spent much of this season sharing the load. That changes now. With Doncic and Reaves sidelined, the Lakers will need LeBron to be the player he has been for two decades—the best player on the floor, every night, in every moment that matters. The supporting cast around him—Rui Hachimura, Marcus Smart, and the rest—will need to step up significantly as well.
But make no mistake: the Lakers’ playoff ceiling now runs directly through LeBron. In a Western Conference where the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs, Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, and others are healthier and equally dangerous, the Lakers will need him to be exactly what he has always been: their best player, their alpha.
At 41, that is a lot to ask.
