The Los Angeles Lakers have faced a whirlwind of emotions in the last 24 hours.
The team suffered an all-out debacle in last night’s loss to the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder. Just when it felt like things couldn’t get any worse, star point guard Luka Doncic began hobbling in the third quarter on a play he was being defended by Jalen Williams.
Doncic immediately reflected a hurting state and drifted off to the baseline, where lay down and covered his face with both hands.
Already trying to survive on a thread, the life of the Lakers was sucked out of them.
Finally, the night ended in a 43-point drubbing, but all L.A. wanted to know was the severity of Doncic’s injury and how long he’ll potentially be in street clothes.
Entering Thursday’s game in Oklahoma City, Doncic was in the midst of one of the most sparkling stretches any player has had in the history of the NBA. His 600 total points in March was the third-highest mark ever for a single month.
The many avalanche scoring performances slingshotted Doncic up the MVP ladder.
But we are now learning that perhaps Doncic’s case to win this year’s Michael Jordan Trophy wasn’t so powerful after all.
Los Angeles Lakers star gets deflating MVP news amid injury concern
Many were ready to crown Doncic as the frontrunner after leading his team to a 15-2 record last month. The Lakers were arguably the hottest team in basketball; only the Thunder and San Antonio Spurs were in the same conversation.
Doncic was certainly the most explosive scorer of any player last month. He even had a 60-point game, the highest since he joined Los Angeles in a seismic trade 14 months ago.
With the regular season winding down, it is almost time for voters to submit their ballots for all awards and honors. Nothing gets NBA fans more on the edge of their seats than the MVP race.
This morning, ESPN revealed its final straw poll of the season. The panel behind the poll are people who have an actual vote, so the results are virtually a dead-solid indication of how the real voting will shape out.
Look away, Lakers fans, this is where it gets testy.
According to the results, Doncic — who has picked up so much steam for the MVP award in recent weeks — received a total of … zero first-place votes.
Read that twice if need be.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who received the most first-place votes, along with Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic, both received more first-place votes than Doncic.
Doncic did, however, receive six second-place, 24 third-place and 59 fourth-place votes. He wasn’t outright ignored by the panel, either.
Doncic, Lakers have bigger concerns as playoffs get closer
This is perhaps the worst time of year to sustain an injury. Not only is Doncic’s MVP case likely going to be impacted, but so is his eligibility for postseason awards.
The 27-year-old Lakers star just needs to play at least 20 more minutes in one more game to maintain eligibility. But even doing that may be tough.
If Doncic is diagnosed with a hamstring strain, even the least severe variant of the injury will sideline him for 1-2 weeks. His eligibility will be nullified if that’s the case. If it’s a Grade 2 or 3 strain, L.A. is in danger of missing Doncic for some, if not more, of the team’s first round playoff series. That is crushing to even think about.
The Lakers are hoping Doncic’s injury was nothing more than minor tweak, even though it looked a lot more than marginal considering Doncic’s body language after he went down in last night’s game.
Los Angeles has five games of runway before the playoffs. The good news is that the team will receive roughly a week off as the play-in tournament goes on. That could be critical in getting Doncic fully healthy before Game 1 of the first round.
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