Lakers lose Austin Reaves (indirect) for relaxation of common season

DALLAS — Already reeling from the Luka Doncic left hamstring pressure diagnosis that will sideline him indefinitely, the Los Angeles Lakers announced Saturday that Austin Reaves has been identified with a Grade 2 left indirect muscle damage and will be out for the the rest of the common season.

While the staff gave no timetable for his return, sources advised ESPN’s Shams Charania that Reaves is expected to miss 4 to six weeks.

Reaves underwent an MRI on his indirect/rib space Saturday. He was initially listed as questionable to play against the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday.

Marcus Smart was ruled out vs. the Mavs on Saturday — his seventh consecutive recreation missed — while Jarred Vanderbilt was added to the damage report as questionable with proper calf soreness.

Despite being undermanned, coach JJ Redick said earlier Saturday that the Lakers’ resolve is robust.

“Our mission, it hasn’t changed,” Redick said. “The rest of these guys and my staff, we’re going after the 3-seed and we’re going to try to win a playoff series. And we’ll see what happens with Luka.”

Los Angeles (50-27) has a half-game lead on the No. 4 Denver Nuggets, a two-game lead on the No. 5 Houston Rockets and a four-game lead on the No. 6 Minnesota Timberwolves with 5 video games remaining. The Lakers maintain the tiebreaker against all three of those groups by profitable the season collection against each.

The Lakers announced Friday that Doncic has a Grade 2 left hamstring pressure, an damage that usually includes a monthlong restoration. The Lakers have not supplied a timetable for Doncic’s return beyond lacking the relaxation of the common season. The first spherical of the NBA playoffs begins in two weeks.

Reaves tweaked his left aspect in the first half of the Lakers’ 139-96 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday. He went back to the locker room for analysis but returned to the recreation and completed with a team-high 15 factors in 27 minutes.

“I went back to get a rebound, overextended a little bit, and I felt something,” Reaves defined after the recreation. “But I feel decent right now, so we’ll see.”

Reaves required two MRI exams on the damage after the first one scanned the unsuitable space of his physique.

“I don’t know where the chain of command lies with Dallas imaging, but they scanned the wrong area,” Redick said. “Not on our end.”

With Doncic and Reaves out, Redick said Los Angeles would divide the offensive burden between a handful of gamers, rattling off the names of LeBron James, Luke Kennard, Rui Hachimura and Deandre Ayton.

“I mean, it’s a challenge for us,” James said after observe. “It’s always got to be a next-man-up [mentality]. But there’s no way you can replace that type of impact. So it’s going to be a collective group. We all have to figure out a way to do a little bit more. … But now you got to be even more tightened up on the things that we do.

“When you lose a particular participant like that, you can’t have as many errors. So we got to determine that out.”

James had shifted into the Lakers’ third option during their recent hot streak, with Doncic and Reaves shouldering the most playmaking duties. In his last seven games, James averaged 15.6 points on 46.3% shooting (25.0% from 3), 7.3 rebounds and 7.3 assists. He averaged only 11.7 field goal attempts per game in that stretch, well below his 18.6 career average.

“You got to flip the mindset a little bit when your function adjustments, whatever the case may be or what’s needed out of [you for] the staff,” James said when asked how he will mentally prepare for the challenge ahead. “So the mindset adjustments a little bit, for sure.”

Redick said he planned to expand the rotation in the interim, going from nine players to possibly 11, and mentioned that Kobe Bufkin, Nick Smith Jr. and Dalton Knecht would be a part of the staff in Dallas after taking part in for the South Bay Lakers in the G League playoffs.

“All arms on deck,” Redick said.

After playing the Mavericks on Sunday, the Lakers have three straight games against teams that will factor into the Western Conference postseason picture — Oklahoma City on Tuesday, the Golden State Warriors on Thursday, the Phoenix Suns on Friday — before the season finale next Sunday at home against the Utah Jazz.

“This staff performs actually extraordinarily laborious,” James said of Dallas. “… They just had a dogfight versus Orlando. We know we got OKC. We got Golden State, who is still preventing. We got Phoenix, who is still preventing. So it’s going to still be a little robust on us. So we got to be prepared for that.”

Upon information of Reaves’ damage, DraftKings lengthened the Lakers to 120-1 to win the NBA Finals and 80-1 to win the Western Conference. Before Friday, the Lakers had been 30-1 for the title and 15-1 for the convention, but the announcement of Doncic’s damage plummeted them to 100-1 and 60-1, respectively.

ESPN’s Doug Greenberg contributed to this report.