The Los Angeles Lakers’ highly anticipated showdown with the Oklahoma City Thunder was not going well. Then it got worse. So much worse.
A game that saw the Lakers trail by 23 points after the first quarter and by 31 points at halftime ended with them holding their breath about superstar Luka Dončić’s status after a 139-96 beatdown at the hands of the top team in the NBA standings.
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If the game ends up being the Western Conference finals preview it was billed as, the average fan won’t have much to look forward to. But that’s a relatively minor problem for the Lakers right now.
Dončić exited the game in the third quarter with an apparent leg injury. Los Angeles later announced he had sustained a left hamstring injury and would not return to the game. He will undergo an MRI on Friday to determine the severity of the injury, according to ESPN’s Dave McMenamin.
Lakers head coach JJ Redick revealed to reporters after the game that Dončić had actually tweaked his hamstring in the first half but was cleared to play in the second half. This is also the same hamstring that caused Dončić to miss four games in February.
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Adding salt to the wound is the fact that Thursday was Dončić’s 64th appearance of the season. If he doesn’t return by the end of the regular season, he will not be eligible for any NBA postseason honors due to the league’s eligibility rules. These are the rules that have already guaranteed Anthony Edwards, Cade Cunningham and LeBron James won’t be awards-eligible, drawing the ire of the NBPA.
The Thunder had no trouble with the Lakers
Even when the Lakers’ MVP candidate was playing, there was no phase of the game in which the Thunder didn’t obliterate L.A.
The game was effectively over at the end of the third quarter with OKC leading 112-67. By that point, the Thunder were shooting 53.1% from the field and 50% from deep, compared to 41.8% and 22.7% for the Lakers, respectively. The Thunder were leading the rebounding battle 48-31 and the turnover battle 15-6, which is how their number of field goals (43) wasn’t far off from the Lakers’ number of field-goal attempts (55).
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OKC never trailed and had its lead peak at 46 points, the largest deficit of the season for the Lakers.
Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander led all scorers with 28 points plus 7 rebounds and 7 assists despite not playing at all in the fourth quarter. Isaiah Joe and Lu Dort also both caught fire from 3-point range at different times and finished a combined 10-of-14 from the perimeter.
It was the kind of game in which you burn the tape, but the Dončić situation means consequences will follow the Lakers into the next day. Not helping is that Austin Reaves, the team’s second-leading scorer, also left the game with an apparent back injury in the first half. He ended up returning and leading L.A. with, um, 15 points, but that’s one area of the body where injuries are prone to linger.
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The Lakers have been playing winning basketball and are still third in the Western Conference standings, but they were looking for any indication they could be in the same tier as the Thunder and second-place San Antonio Spurs.
They are now a combined 1-6 against that duo, with their single win by two points over the Spurs in November. All six of their losses have come since then, by an average of 23 points.
Even assuming Dončić is 100% by the start of the playoffs, that’s a lot of ground to make up in a seven-game series.