{"id":478756,"date":"2026-02-19T23:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T23:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/478756\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T23:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T23:21:08","slug":"lakers-luka-doncic-expects-to-return-austin-reaves-off-minutes-restriction-after-all-star-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/478756\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers’ Luka Doncic expects to return, Austin Reaves off minutes restriction after All-Star break"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 The Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> expect to be fully healthy for the first time in recent memory when they return from the All-Star break.<\/p>\n

NBA scoring leader Luka Doncic said Thursday that he will \u201cprobably\u201d return to the court after missing the Lakers\u2019 final four games before the break with a mild hamstring strain<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Austin Reaves also will no longer be on his minutes restriction stemming from a five-week absence with a calf injury, coach JJ Redick said after practice at the Lakers\u2019 training complex.<\/p>\n

LeBron James, who went into the break<\/a> by becoming the oldest play to record a triple-double, is also expected to be uniform when the Lakers host the Clippers. That means the Lakers\u2019 three best players should all suit up together for only the 11th time in 55 games this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny, we were talking before the season about building continuity with those three guys, and we\u2019ve had them available together for 10 games,\u201d Redick said. \u201cIt\u2019s just the situation we\u2019re in. We\u2019re not the only team that has had a bunch of health issues throughout the season and had to manage that, but my message to the players this morning was that this is going to be a sprint for these last 28 games.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lakers have no consecutive days off between the All-Star break and March 28-29, so Redick hopes his team will seize on the opportunity presented by full health out of the break to stack some wins in the competitive Western Conference. Los Angeles (33-21) entered the break in fifth place in the West despite the lengthy absences of Reaves and James, who has missed 18 games this season.<\/p>\n

Starting center Deandre Ayton also is expected to be back for the Lakers after a sore right knee kept him out before the break<\/p>\n

Doncic hasn\u2019t played for the Lakers since Feb. 5. He suited up for the World team at the NBA All-Star Game<\/a> on Sunday, but played only the first five minutes of the first mini-game before sitting out the rest of the afternoon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was on minutes restriction,\u201d he said with a grin. \u201cIt was definitely good to get up and down a little bit (at practice) after having a week off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reaves\u2019 return to full strength could be an enormous boost to the Lakers, who haven\u2019t had their No. 3 option at full strength since he strained his calf on Christmas. He was the NBA\u2019s ninth-leading scorer at 27.8 points per game before his injury.<\/p>\n

Reaves said the full-strength Lakers have the potential \u201cto win a lot of games. You can tell throughout the season, even with the unfortunate injuries, we\u2019ve done a good job maintaining it. We\u2019re on pace for a good record, and getting healthy is going to help that. It\u2019ll be fun to see what that looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (AP) \u2014 The Los Angeles Lakers expect to be fully healthy for the first time…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[20509,6778,11654,2356,3012,3013,1055,3014,355,1063,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-478756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-athlete-injuries","9":"tag-austin","10":"tag-austin-reaves","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-j-j-redick","13":"tag-lebron-james","14":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","15":"tag-luka-doncic","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-nba-basketball","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478756","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=478756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}