{"id":641252,"date":"2026-04-30T20:13:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/641252\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T20:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T20:13:16","slug":"lakers-austin-reaves-oblique-returning-to-lineup-for-game-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/641252\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers’ Austin Reaves (oblique) returning to lineup for Game 5"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Austin Reaves has been out since April 2, missing the final 5 games of the regular season and\u00a0the first 4games of the postseason.<\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 Austin Reaves is returning from a nine-game injury absence Wednesday night when the Los Angeles Lakers attempt to finish their first-round playoff series with the Houston Rockets in Game 5.<\/p>\n

Reaves has been out since April 2 with strained oblique muscles, missing the final five games of the Lakers\u2019 regular season and\u00a0the first four games of the postseason<\/a>. But Reaves returned to practice last week, and\u00a0he warmed up for the previous two games<\/a>\u00a0in the series in Houston before being ruled out.<\/p>\n

Reaves was injured in the same game in which\u00a0NBA scoring champion Luka Doncic<\/a>\u00a0strained his right hamstrings. Doncic doesn\u2019t yet appear to be close to a return.<\/p>\n

The Lakers won the first three games of the series without their top two scorers, but\u00a0the Rockets took Game 4<\/a>\u00a0to push the series back to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Reaves averaged 23.3 points, 5.5 assists and 4.7 rebounds this season, but played in just 51 games thanks to the oblique injury and a strained left calf that sidelined him for 19 straight games from Christmas to February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austin Reaves has been out since April 2, missing the final 5 games of the regular season and\u00a0the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":641253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-641252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641252","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=641252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/641252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/641253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=641252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=641252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=641252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}