So, now what?
It’s the uncomfortable question that Lakers fans have or will come to this weekend in the aftermath of both a blowout loss to the Thunder and, more importantly, the loss of Luka Dončić to a Grade 2 hamstring strain.
This injury is going to have wide-spreading ripple effects on the Lakers.
Officially, Luka is listed as out indefinitely and will miss the rest of the regular season. Given the typical recovery time of Grade 2 injuries, though, it’s likely Luka will miss the first round of the playoffs
and potentially the second round, if the Lakers can even make it that far without him.
Where does that leave the purple and gold, then, moving forward, both in the short and long term?
Playoff seeding
The Lakers have five games remaining in the regular season and are not locked into a playoff seed yet. While it went under the radar last week, LA did clinch a playoff spot, meaning the play-in is out of the question.
The standings are still tight, however, with LA one game up on Denver and two games up on Houston in the fourth and fifth spots, respectively. Minnesota has taken a nosedive and is four games back of the Lakers in the sixth seed, so there is a floor for LA to fall.
Having the tiebreakers over both Denver and Houston will be huge.
The Lakers also don’t have a particularly daunting schedule, sans another meeting with Oklahoma City on Tuesday. They will play at Dallas on Sunday, the Thunder on Tuesday, at Golden State on Thursday, at home against Phoenix on Friday and at home against Utah to wrap up the season.
Compare that to Denver’s schedule as they play San Antonio twice and Oklahoma City once in its final five games. Even if they go undefeated to end the season — and they almost assuredly won’t — the Lakers can still go 4-1 and stay above them.
As for Houston, they play at Golden State and Phoenix before hosting the Sixers, Wolves and Grizzlies to end the season. While they’ve won five games in a row, the only win against a non-tanking team in that span was the Knicks. Similar to the Nuggets, if the Rockets go undefeated, LA could still go 3-2 to stay above them.
In short, the Lakers are in a decent position to remain in the No. 3 spot even without Luka because of their work up to this point in the season.
All of this also doesn’t account for Austin Reaves’ potential absence due to his own injury, which further complicates things. Because when it rains, it pours.
Join the conversation!
Sign up for a user account and get:
- Fewer ads
- Create community posts
- Comment on articles, community posts
- Rec comments, community posts
- New, improved notifications system!
Postseason match-up
Once the playoffs roll around, the Lakers are going to look much different. While they’ve had success without Luka this year, this will be the ultimate stress test.
They’re going to have a week to change their play style, particularly shifting LeBron from his third-fiddle role to a more on-ball role. While they’ve all had success doing this at times, even this season, it’ll still be a notable change in how they play and one they aren’t going to have much time to work on before the playoffs.
None of this speaks to the MVP level Luka was playing at, either, and the raw production they’ll have to replace as a team now. It’s a gigantic hole that has been left and, now, it feels like just winning a first round series could be a successful postseason.
In theory, Luka could return at some point in the playoffs. It feels highly unlikely that would be in the first round, though. At the very least, they shouldn’t have him come back then. Perhaps if they get to the second round and can steal a game or two, a likely less-than-100% version of Luka could return, but that is so far down the road that it barely feels worth debating.
Offseason plans
The summer is going to be full of decisions for the Lakers and they’re now going to have to make them without seeing the best version of this team in the playoffs.
In fact, with the injuries they dealt with during the season, the sample size of the recent, idealized version of the Lakers is about a dozen games. It was a really good dozen games, but it was also a dozen games that ended in a dismantling by the Thunder.
The playoffs were supposed to serve as the big stress test for the team to learn if this really worked, particularly against the top teams, and where they needed changes. Instead, the front office will have to make decisions this summer with an incomplete data set.
Is it worth bringing LeBron back this summer or is it time to rip off the band-aid? Do they need another center this summer? Two new centers? How do some of the Lakers’ role players set for free agency hold up in the playoffs alongside Luka like Rui Hachimura or Luke Kennard?
These are all questions this front office won’t have fully satisfactory answers on, which is what makes this injury such a gut punch.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
