Trouble In La-La Land, Are The Lakers 'Cooked'?

The Los Angeles Lakers wanted this season to be LeBron James happy swan song. Despite the Lakers playing some of the best basketball since the all-star break, they haven’t received the news that they wanted the past few days.

Trouble In La-La Land, Are The Lakers “Cooked”?

One day after learning that Luka Doncic has a Grade 2 left hamstring strain, The California Post’s Khobi Price disclosed that the Lakers will also be without Austin Reaves for the for the foreseeable future due to an oblique muscle injury earlier this evening.

“Austin Reaves has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury and will be out for the remainder of the regular season, per the Lakers,” Price tweeted. 

Like Doncic, Reaves suffered his injury during the Los Angeles’ 139-96 blowout loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Reaves, who was not 100% heading into the game against the Thunder due to dealing with several nagging injuries, vacated Thursday’s contest twice. Reaves went to the locker room to be checked out in the first half after “tweaking something” in his left side, although he returned for the start of the second, before seeing his night end in the third quarter. 

“I went back to get a rebound, overextended a little bit, and I felt something,” Reaves told reporters after the game via ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “But I feel decent right now, so we’ll see.”

According to McMenamin, Reaves had to have two MRIs done in Dallas as the first one didn’t focus on the right area of his body.  The Lakers are in Dallas as they face the Mavericks tomorrow.

“I don’t know where the chain of command lies with Dallas imaging, but they scanned the wrong area,” coach JJ Redick told McMenamin. “Not on our end.”

What Do Doncic and Reaves Injuries Mean?

Reaves, who produced career season, is expected to be out four-to-six weeks though the team has not given an official timetable, per Shams Charania of ESPN. Therefore, he will miss the Lakers first-round series and likely won’t return unless the Lakers reach the Western Conference finals.

The Lakers will be without Reaves and Doncic for the remainder of the regular season. While the Lakers haven’t given any expectation of when Doncic could return, Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes tweeted that the averaged Grade 2 hamstring strain, also known as a partial or incomplete tear, costs players 35 days. Therefore, Doncic likely won’t be back on the court until May. 

“I’m definitely concerned with a short turnaround,” Nirva Pandya, a professor at UCSF in orthopedic surgery, told Mark Medina of Essentially Sports  yesterday. “In general, these Grade 2 strains usually have a three-to-six-week time frame for players to return from that. When you have a short time period to come back into playoff-level intensity basketball, you really worry about two things. One, can a player come back? Two, even if they come back, how impactful can they be?”

Doncic and Reaves have become a dangerous duo and are a major reason why the Lakers have a top-10 backcourt The Lakers starting backcourt are combining for 59 points, including six threes, while shooting 48% from the field and 36% from the 3-point line. The pair also total 12 rebounds and three steals a game. The Lakers, who are 27-12 when Doncic and Reaves have started together this year, have a +8.6-scoring margin per 100 possessions when the pair are on the court together.

Lakers Could Realistically Fall To 5th In Western Conference

So, that is a lot of production that the Lakers lost. The Lakers are a top 10 offensive team and are 11th in scoring at 116.5 points a game. But James has been the team’s only other consistent scorer.

LA sits in third place in the Western Conference at 50-27 with five games left.  The Lakers, who are 17-6 (fourth best) since the all-star break, hold a half game lead over the Denver Nuggets. They also hold a two-game lead over fifth-place Houston Rockets, who have won five straight.

While Tankathon lists Lakers as having the 10th easiest record, they could realistically fall to fifth in the conference. After facing the Mavericks, the Lakers host OKC before heading to Golden State on Wednesday. The Lakers close the season at home against Phoenix and Utah. They are 0-3 against the Thunder, 2-1 versus the Warriors, and have lost three of four against the Suns.

Meanwhile, the Nuggets has third hardest schedule and the Rockets have the 13th easiest. The Nuggets own the tiebreaker with the Lakers due to head-to-head results though the Rockets do not.

To make matters worse, Marcus Smart has also been ruled out against Dallas due to ankle injury. It is his seventh straight absence. Jared Vanderbilt is also dealing with calf injury and is questionable.

Lakers In Trouble In Playoffs, If Not Healthy

Even if the Lakers miraculously hold onto the third spot, which seems unlikely, they will have an uphill climb in the playoffs. Either way, the Lakers project to face Minnesota or Houston in the first round. The Rockets have a two-game advantage over the sixth-seeded Timberwolves.

Minnesota has underperformed a little this season, but the Timberwolves have reached the Western Conference finals the last two seasons. The Wolves knocked the Lakers out in the first-round last season while the Rockets are extremely talented and have been playing well of late.

Los Angeles is 3-4 when Reaves and Doncic have sat this year and just 14-12 when Reaves doesn’t play. Moreover, the Lakers are 10-13 against the conference’s top 8 teams, having been outscored by nearly 7.5 points.

“Upon news of Reaves’ injury, DraftKings lengthened Los Angeles to 120-1 to win the NBA Finals and 80-1 to win the Western Conference,” ESPN Doug Greenberg said. “Before Friday, the Lakers had been 30-1 for the title and 15-1 for the conference, but the announcement of Doncic’s injury plummeted them to 100-1 and 60-1, respectively.”