The bad news just keeps coming for the Los Angeles Lakers. The team announced Saturday that guard Austin Reaves will miss the remainder of the regular season after being diagnosed with a Grade 2 oblique strain. The injury is expected to sideline Reaves for 4-6 weeks, per ESPN, which means he could miss the entire first round of the playoffs, which begins April 18.
This news comes after Luka Dončić was ruled out for the remainder of the regular season on Friday due to a hamstring strain. Reaves played 26 minutes in the Lakers’ loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday (the same game when Dončić was injured) and went back to the locker room for a period of time in the first half after tweaking his left side. He returned to the game after evaluation, but underwent an MRI on his oblique/rib area on Saturday, which confirmed the injury.
“I went back to get a rebound, overextended a little bit, and I felt something,” Reaves said Thursday. “But I feel decent right now, so we’ll see.”
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Reaves had to undergo two MRIs after the first one incorrectly scanned the wrong part of his body, something Lakers coach JJ Redick called attention to when talking to reporters Saturday afternoon.
“I don’t know where the chain of command lies with Dallas imaging, but they scanned the wrong area,” Redick said. “Not on our end.”
Redick said Thursday that both Reaves and Dončić — the team’s two leading scorers — were cleared to return to action at halftime. The Lakers trailed 82-51 at that point, and Redick said the plan was for them to play “about six minutes” to see if they could “cut into the lead” before deciding whether to shut them down for the rest of the game. Dončić, after appearing to tweak his hamstring in the first half, went down with 7:39 left in the third and did not return. Reaves was pulled at the 4:37 mark of the third with the game out of reach.
Where do the Lakers go from here?
The Lakers (50-27) are currently in the No. 3 spot in the West standings. With five regular-season games remaining, they can finish anywhere from third to sixth. But with both Dončić and Reaves out for likely the first round of the playoffs, L.A. could be looking at an early playoff exit.
With their top two scorers down, there’s no one else on this roster that can credibly make up for all that scoring, as hard as 41-year-old LeBron James will certainly try. And let’s say James puts on his superhero cape once more and carries a broken Lakers roster past the first round. Then you have to have the conversation about bringing Reaves and Dončić back.
Rushing them back early for the sake of a playoff run that might not go beyond the second round has its risks, especially as we saw with Tyrese Haliburton in the NBA Finals a season ago. Haliburton returned from a calf strain mid-series, then suffered a catastrophic Achilles tear in Game 7, sidelining him for all of this season. That would absolutely be the worst-case scenario for the Lakers, especially with an important offseason coming up.
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The best plan of action, as difficult as it may be, would be to assume Dončić and Reaves aren’t coming back at all in the playoffs — unless this team makes a miraculous run to the conference or NBA Finals — and look ahead to the summer.
The Lakers are projected to have near-max cap space (around $48 million) this summer, which they can use to further add pieces around Dončić and Reaves. The goal should be finding a quality big man to pair with him, as Dončić always thrived with a pick-and-roll partner who can catch lobs and protect the rim on the other end, like Daniel Gafford in Dallas. Finding wing defenders to cover up Dončić’s and Reaves’ defensive lapses should also be a priority, while also finding some more shooting depth to improve their current 18th-ranked 3-point effort.
Building what the Mavericks did around Dončić in the run to the 2024 NBA Finals is what the Lakers should be aiming for with some slight improvements. That sounds easier said than done — it took Dallas six seasons to build that team — but Los Angeles is a more desirable market than Dallas, and there are likely very few players who wouldn’t want to play with Dončić.
It’s been a depressing 24 hours for Lakers fans with all this injury news, but the light at the end of the tunnel is the 2026 offseason and what this team could be next year.
