DALLAS \u2014 Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves will miss the rest of the regular season with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury, the team announced Saturday. A league source told The Athletic\u00a0that Reaves is expected to miss four to six weeks with the injury.<\/p>\n
The injury news comes one day after the Lakers learned Luka Don\u010di\u0107 would miss the remainder of the regular season \u2014 at least \u2014 with a Grade 2 hamstring strain.<\/p>\n
Reaves suffered the injury in the first half of the Lakers\u2019 blowout loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday when he reached back to tap a loose ball to himself. Immediately after grabbing the rebound, Reaves reached for his left side in pain.<\/p>\n
He remained in the game despite appearing uncomfortable. He went back to the locker room minutes later after checking out, only to return in the second quarter. He was taken out of the game in the third quarter shortly after Don\u010di\u0107 suffered his hamstring injury.<\/p>\n
Reaves had been playing through a number of other injuries, including one to his right wrist.<\/p>\n
The Lakers will be without Reaves\u2019 23.3 points, 5.5 assists and 4.7 rebounds in addition to the 33.5 points, 8.3 assists and 7.7 rebounds they lost with Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s injury.<\/p>\n
Reaves is expected to decline the final year of his contract and become an unrestricted free agent this offseason.<\/p>\n
LeBron James, at 41 and in his 23rd season, is now the last member standing of the team\u2019s Big Three. The Lakers went 15-2 and put themselves in control of the West\u2019s No. 3 seed in March, partially because James sacrificed and molded his game around Don\u010di\u0107 and Reaves.<\/p>\n
Now, that changes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got to flip the mindset a little bit,\u201d James said Saturday at practice. \u201c\u2026 I think it\u2019s up to all of us \u2014 whoever is in the lineup \u2014 to pick up our play.<\/p>\n
\u201cPick up our individual play, and make plays together, and figure out ways we can get stops and figure out ways we can get the ball moving from one side to the other side offensively. And then keep the same keys. No turnovers, obviously. Limit teams\u2019 fast-break points. Limit teams\u2019 offensive rebounds. So it\u2019s a lot of keys that we still need to do in order for us to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the Lakers knew for certain they\u2019d be without Don\u010di\u0107, Reaves and Marcus Smart (who is still dealing with a sore ankle), Lakers coach JJ Redick said he thought the team had enough playmaking to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s enough that we have in that we can, you know, play through LeBron, play through Luke (Kennard), play through Rui (Hachimura), play through (Deandre Ayton). \u2026 And then we\u2019ll just wait and see until Austin and Smart are back. But our mission hasn\u2019t changed,\u201d Redick said Saturday. \u201cWe want to go get the 3 seed and we want to win a first-round series. And I know Luka\u2019s gonna do everything he can to get back on the court. We don\u2019t know what this recovery timetable looks like.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, you know, our job, the rest of these guys, and my staff, we\u2019re going after the 3 seed, and we\u2019re gonna try to win a playoff series. And we\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lakers, though, are no longer just waiting on Don\u010di\u0107.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DALLAS \u2014 Los Angeles Lakers guard Austin Reaves will miss the rest of the regular season with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698639,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,150,6,12],"class_list":{"0":"post-698638","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nba-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116349032517552493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}