The Los Angeles Lakers will be without Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves for the visit with the Mavs on Easter, and coach J.J. Redick has gotten frustrated with Dallas' training staff during the injury evaluation process.
The Los Angeles Lakers are in town to face the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center on the evening of Easter Sunday, but much to the dismay of Mavs faithful, fans will not get the opportunity to see Luka Doncic in action.
Doncic injured his hamstring in the Lakers' last game, a blowout loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday. In the days since, the Lakers have been in Dallas preparing for the matchup with the Mavericks. It's been confirmed that Doncic, the NBA's leading scorer at over 33 points per game, has suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain and is out for at least the rest of the regular-season.
Sitting on 64 games played on the year - one shy of the minimum to qualify for end-of-season awards - Doncic and his team will be filing a grievance in order to try to keep his candidacy for First Team All-NBA and potentially the MVP award.
"To ensure that Luka's incredible accomplishments this season are rightly honored and he can be considered for the league's end-of-season awards, we intend to apply for an "Extraordinary Circumstances Challenge" to the 65-game rule," said Doncic's agent Bill Duffy, via ESPN.
"Luka missed two games this season for the birth of his second child in Slovenia. His daughter was born on Dec. 4 on another continent, and yet he was back in the United States competing with his team on Dec. 6. Luka has gone to great lengths to show up for his team and this league this season. His record-breaking season deserves to be noted in the history books, despite [Thursday's] unfortunate injury and other extraordinary circumstances."
As for the injuries, this was just the beginning of the woes this week for LA.
Doncic's backcourt running mate, Austin Reaves, has also been ruled out after suffering a Grade 2 oblique injury.
On Saturday in Dallas, the Lakers hoped to get imaging done on Reaves, a 23.3 points-per-game scorer, but apparently there was an error by the Mavs' athletic training staff in the evaluation process.
"I don't know where the chain of command lies with Dallas imaging, but, uh, they scanned the wrong area," Lakers coach J.J. Redick said. "[The error was] not on our end. We made it explicit what was supposed to be scanned but they scanned the wrong area."
While Reaves' results was not exactly clear, Redick was honest in assessing how the Lakers' rotation would adjust as Los Angeles fights to keep the No. 3 seed in the current Western Conference playoff standings.
"Until we know the status of AR and [injured guard Marcus] Smart - those are the second and third ball handlers, so the ball handling role - we'll obviously have to ask guys to do more," the coach said. "Kobe [Bufkin], Nick [Smith Jr.], Dalton [Knecht], those guys will be with us at some point ... we'll probably have to play a 10- and 11-man rotation, all hands on deck."
On the injury front, the Mavs will remain without Kyrie Irving and Dereck Lively II, but role players P.J. Washington and Marvin Bagley III are both trending in a positive direction after missing time recently.
The Mavs will rely on star rookie Cooper Flagg for production on both ends of the floor, and he's coming off arguably the best game of his young career on Friday.
Though the Mavericks lost to the Orlando Magic and extended their home losing stretch to 14 games, Flagg was dominant, scoring 51 points and making history in the process.
Dallas (24-53) hosts Los Angeles (50-27) at 6:30 p.m. CT on NBC and Peacock.
