CLEVELAND \u2013 Lakers guard Luka Don\u010di\u0107 appeared to suffer a left leg injury in the first quarter on Wednesday when he stepped in the gap between the Cleveland Cavaliers\u2019 home court and the bench.<\/p>\n
The Cavaliers have the only raised court in the NBA, with the arena floor a few inches lower than the playing surface.<\/p>\n
Don\u010di\u0107 fell backwards off the court after shooting a fading 3-point shot in front of the Lakers\u2019 bench. As he hopped backwards, his left foot slipped, and he fell. He stayed on the ground for an extended period, grabbing at his lower left leg.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of got scared,\u201d Don\u010di\u0107 said after the Lakers\u2019 129-99 loss to Cleveland. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a great feeling, and, looking back at the video, I think I got a little bit lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n
He limped to the locker room without putting much weight on the leg. He returned to the game later in the quarter, though he clearly was bothered by the ankle.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to go,\u201d he said. \u201cObviously, wasn\u2019t 100 percent. But I tried.\u201d<\/p>\n
He finished with 29 points, five rebounds and six assists, but the Lakers suffered their worst loss of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like everybody was a little low energy,\u201d Don\u010di\u0107 said. \u201cThose games are gonna come, but we gotta be way better than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u010di\u0107 isn\u2019t the first NBA player to suffer an injury because of the gap between the court and the arena floor. In 2023, Miami Heat guard Dru Smith injured his right knee when he got stuck between the court and arena floor contesting a 3-point shot.<\/p>\n
The Heat reportedly contacted the NBA with safety concerns after Smith\u2019s Grade 3 ACL sprain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is absolutely a safety hazard,\u201d Lakers coach JJ Redick said after the game. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know why it\u2019s still like that. I don\u2019t. You know, you can lodge formal complaints. A lot of times you don\u2019t see any change when you lodge a formal complaint.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CLEVELAND \u2013 Lakers guard Luka Don\u010di\u0107 appeared to suffer a left leg injury in the first quarter on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[8174,1055,355,99],"class_list":["post-436585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}