rallied for a 119-115 victory<\/a> led by Austin Reaves, who scored 35 points in just 25 minutes during his second game back from a 19-game absence with a calf injury.<\/p>\n\u201cI talked to (Doncic) a little bit at halftime, asked if he was OK, and he kind of just looked at me,\u201d Reaves said. \u201cHopefully it\u2019s nothing major. We need him. He\u2019s our best player and the engine of a lot of stuff that we do. Hopefully it\u2019ll be good news tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doncic left the arena with a slight limp in his step.<\/p>\n
The Lakers could be forgiven for feeling frustration after yet another injury to one of their three stars.<\/p>\n
Doncic, Reaves and LeBron James were all playing together for only the 10th time in Los Angeles\u2019 50 games this season before Doncic got hurt against the Sixers. The Lakers are still in the thick of the Western Conference playoff race at 31-19 despite not knowing what they could look like at full strength for a prolonged period.<\/p>\n
James missed the first 14 games of the season with sciatica, and Reaves only returned last Tuesday night in the Lakers\u2019 win at Brooklyn to close their eight-game road trip.<\/p>\n
Reaves appears to be back in top form already after his scoring barrage while playing on a minutes restriction. He went 12 of 17 from the field and hit five 3-pointers along with six rebounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get hurt, obviously there\u2019s a period where you don\u2019t do much, and then for the last two or three weeks, I\u2019ve been grinding,\u201d Reaves said. \u201cI\u2019ve played many stay-ready games. … The amount of time I actually played, I felt like I got a good jump from that. You don\u2019t expect to be ready right off the bat, but I feel like we did a good job of trying to keep my rhythm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doncic was the NBA\u2019s Western Conference player of the month for January after averaging 34.0 points on 50.6% shooting with 7.2 rebounds, 9.1 assists and 1.5 steals in a dominant stretch of play.<\/p>\n
He was also selected for his sixth All-Star game, voted in as a starter for the annual event at Intuit Dome in nearby Inglewood, California, next weekend.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) \u2014 NBA scoring leader Luka Doncic will have an MRI exam on Friday after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[20509,11654,2356,3012,3013,1055,3014,18318,355,1063,5631,3234,200479,99,1022,1059],"class_list":{"0":"post-452225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-athlete-injuries","9":"tag-austin-reaves","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-j-j-redick","12":"tag-lebron-james","13":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","14":"tag-luka-doncic","15":"tag-medical-diagnostic-technology","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-nba-basketball","18":"tag-pa-state-wire","19":"tag-pennsylvania","20":"tag-send-to-apple-news","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-texas","23":"tag-tx-state-wire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452225","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=452225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}