The Los Angeles Lakers have suddenly stumbled upon major adversity.
The last two months have been triumphant. Los Angeles has exploded as a viable contender in the eyes of many, and a lot of that is thanks to the flourishing play of the star trio of Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and LeBron James.
Doncic steered the Lakers to a 15-2 record in March, all while raising his case in the MVP race and piecing together a scoring explosion not seen since Houston Rockets James Harden and a young Michael Jordan.
But things came to a screeching halt in the third quarter of the Lakers’ forgettable road loss to the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder.
While being guarded by Thunder star Jalen Williams, Doncic conceded possession of the basketball and reached for his hamstring. He then began hobbling very visibly. All L.A. could hope for was that nothing serious had just happened.
We are still awaiting a further update on the severity of Doncic’s injury. Doncic’s hamstring trouble comes at a time with so much at stake, from the Lakers’ positioning in the Western Conference to the 27-year-old star’s race for the MVP and case for an All-NBA selection.
Doctor explains Los Angeles Lakers star’s injury, delivers encouraging news
Lakers fans have been left on the internet all day, refreshing their browser waiting for a Doncic injury update to appear.
Fans have come to the right place.
While there is still no official diagnosis on Doncic’s injury, Dr. Sutterer, who owns a YouTube channel with over 860,000 subscribers, released a video explaining in depth about what may have happened to Doncic last night.
Dr. Sutterer is notorious for producing video breakdowns of star athlete’s injuries. He provided an explanation regarding the injury the Lakers star sustained and how long it could keep him out.
“Just a bread-and-butter, straight-forward hamstring [strain], even if it’s more mild, can still be a 1-2 week, potentially three-week injury,” Dr. Sutterer expressed. “So that could affect his eligibility for the rest of these regular season awards. However, I don’t think this is a season-ending sort of thing.”
With the NBA playoffs just 15 days away, there is officially very minimal time to recover from any injury of any severity. This is simply the most inopportune time to go down hurting.
But there could still be some good news in store for Doncic.
“I’m not as concerned this [injury] is gonna be big, major [or] season-ending,” Dr. Sutterer said. “The mechanism did not seem overly high energy; he was moving fairly slow [when he sustained the injury]. Yes, these can be a recurring sort of thing later on in the year, but I would be thinking more weeks, not months, and would not expect this to be season-ending for Doncic.”
L.A. hoping for the best when MRI scan result is revealed
The extent of Doncic’s injury cannot be learned until the Lakers receive Doncic’s MRI scan results. The L.A. star is expected to receive an MRI scan today.
Unless the injury was a lot more marginal than it looked, recent history has shown us that hamstring troubles can force players to a lengthy shutdown. Of course, the Lakers cannot afford that one iota.
Doncic has somewhat of a history of soft tissue ailments, but he has also shown he can bounce back from them relatively quickly. His team is sure hoping he can be an iron man and muddle through this one.
The Lakers travel to Dallas to take on the Mavericks on Sunday. Even if Doncic escapes major injury, there is a strong possibility he sits out the game to give his hamstring some days off.
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