{"id":583860,"date":"2026-04-03T23:53:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T23:53:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583860\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T23:53:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T23:53:08","slug":"lakers-lose-luka-doncic-to-hamstring-injury-as-nba-play-offs-approach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/583860\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers lose Luka Don\u010di\u0107 to hamstring injury as NBA play-offs approach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luka Don\u010di\u0107 will miss the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers’ regular season with a grade-two hamstring strain.<\/p>\n

Don\u010di\u0107 is the NBA’s top scorer and the driving force behind the Lakers’ surge into the third spot in the Western Conference standings.<\/p>\n

But he injured his left leg during the Lakers’ blowout 139-96 loss to Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday AEDT.<\/p>\n

An MRI exam revealed the severity of the strain and an initial prognosis suggests Don\u010di\u0107 will be sidelined indefinitely.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“At this point, at this juncture of the season, it’s the last thing you want to see,” Don\u010di\u0107’s teammate LeBron James said.<\/p>\n

“When you have an MVP candidate on your team, the last thing you want to see is somebody go down with a hamstring injury.”<\/p>\n

Don\u010di\u0107 trade ‘a seismic event in NBA history’<\/a><\/p>\n

Luka Don\u010di\u0107’s controversial move from the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers shook the NBA’s foundations. Here is why the stunning move has such widespread ramifications.<\/p>\n

Don\u010di\u0107 was injured in the first half against the Thunder but was cleared to return to the game.<\/p>\n

He lasted only about four minutes before he spun, stopped and went down on the court in pain, leading to his departure.<\/p>\n

The Lakers (50-27 win-loss record) have just five games left before the post-season.<\/p>\n

Grade-two hamstring strains sometimes require several weeks of recovery, but Don\u010di\u0107 has experience with similar injuries.<\/p>\n

He missed four games before the All-Star break with another left hamstring strain but returned to the Lakers line-up after the season resumed.<\/p>\n

Don\u010di\u0107 is putting up spectacular numbers in his first full season with the Lakers, who acquired the Slovenian star from the Mavericks last season<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He is averaging 33.5 points, 8.3 assists and 7.7 rebounds per game.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old was named the NBA’s Western Conference player of the month for March after racking up 13 consecutive 30-point performances including seven 40-point games.<\/p>\n

AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luka Don\u010di\u0107 will miss the rest of the Los Angeles Lakers’ regular season with a grade-two hamstring strain.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,101444,3899,35501,2873,7896,481,11473,590,285926,285927,85,16307],"class_list":{"0":"post-583860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-hamstring","11":"tag-injury","12":"tag-la-lakers","13":"tag-lakers","14":"tag-lebron-james","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-luka-doncic","17":"tag-nba","18":"tag-play-offs","19":"tag-regualr-season","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-thunder"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=583860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/583860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=583860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=583860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=583860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}