While Luka Doncic seeks to correct his strained hamstring overseas, the Los Angeles Lakers could consult history to discover a new blueprint to get Doncic on the court back much sooner than expected.
Doncic, 27, incurred a Grade 2 hamstring in L.A. humiliating 43-point loss to the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder last week.
Doncic grabbed the back of leg and winced in pain before frustration took over. He grabbed at his jersey with his teeth and both hands. Perhaps even Doncic knew his season may have been over.
The injury to Doncic is incredibly ill-timed for the Lakers, who rocketed up the Western Conference standings to the third seed behind numerous scoring avalanches authored by Doncic. The team was firing on offense and coming into form on defensive.
Without Doncic — and Austin Reaves, who suffered a Grade 2 oblique strain in the same game — Los Angeles’ season is, for all intents and purposes, considered over. That is unless Doncic sees a miraculous recovery and plays in the playoffs.
When the spring tournament tips off, it’ll still be well under three weeks since Doncic sustained the injury. Grade 2 hamstring strains are notorious for necessitating a month-long, or longer, recovery. Seeing Doncic on the court for Game 1, or even at any point of the first round, would be unprecedented.
Or would it?
Past example proves it is possible Luka Doncic could return much sooner
What has happened to the Lakers mirrors what another extremely potent team went through nearly five years ago.
During the 2021 playoffs, the Brooklyn Nets of Kevin Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving were massively favored to win the championship. That didn’t happen.
In the second round against the Milwaukee Bucks, Irving went down with an ankle injury and Harden sustained a hamstring strain.
Irving was lost for the series, but Harden actually returned before the Bucks ultimately won in seven games.
The point here is that there is precedent of a star player returning quickly after straining his hamstring, as CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn pointed out in a recent article.
What could Doncic expect if he did return? The easiest analogue here would be James Harden, a player to whom Doncic is often compared, in 2021,” Quinn wrote. “He suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain in Game 1 of Brooklyn’s second-round loss to Milwaukee. He missed the next four games and attempted to return for Game 5, just 10 days later. He played almost 46 minutes… and shot 1-of-10 from the floor. He shot 10-of-26 in Games 6 and 7, both losses, and physically looked like a shell of himself. Hamstring injuries are enormously difficult to play through. Even if Dončić could step on the court, it’s hard to imagine him doing so at the MVP-level he’d previously been playing at.”
Could the Lakers actually try to pull this off?
So you’re saying there’s a chance? History says yes.
Perhaps L.A. could throw Doncic out there as the great decoy. Maybe his gravity is so immense that, even on one leg, he is able to help engineer some offense.
The Nets tried exactly that with Harden five years ago. Of course, he didn’t appear at all to be healthy, and his numbers proved that. But there is one major difference between what Brooklyn did and if Los Angeles hypothetically brought Doncic back prematurely.
The Nets were considerable favorites over the Bucks in that series. It was also a Game 7 Harden was out there for. It was kind of like an, “Eh, why not?” kind of ploy.
On the other hand, the Lakers have a ton to lose if they tried the Harden method. With a hobbled Doncic and no Reaves, L.A. has no shot at getting to the Finals or perhaps even past round two. It’s one thing to put an injured player on the court for an all-the-marbles Game 7. It’s a completely different thing to play him for an entire series.
Now maybe if the Lakers get to a Game 7 in the first round, bringing back Doncic for that one game could make marginal sense. But even getting there is a big question.
For now, it is to be expected that Doncic won’t play again this year unless the Lakers make a surprising run or the 27-year-old Lakers star makes an astoundingly quick recovery.
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