Lakers’ Austin Reaves out for regular season with oblique strain

DALLAS- The Lakers will be without their starting backcourt for the remainder of the regular season — five more games — after Austin Reaves was diagnosed with Grade 2 left oblique strain on Saturday.

Lakers coach JJ Redick said Reaves underwent an MRI of his left olbow/rib area.

The team learned earlier this week that Luka Doncic has a Grade 2 left hamstring strain and will be out for the remainder of the regular season — and possibly beyond. Grade 2 strains often take four to six weeks to heal.

The Lakers are also dealing with an injury to guard Marcus Smart, who has missed the last six games with a right ankle contusion and will be out for Sunday’s game at Dallas.

“It’s a lingering ankle pain,” Redick said.

Even with all that, Redick said the Lakers’ “mission hasn’t changed.”

“We want to get the third seed and we want to win a first-round series,” Redick said.

The Lakers are third in the Western Conference, but Denver, Houston and Minnesota are within reach. The Lakers hold the tiebreaker on all three.

They will try to maintain the No. 3 seed over the final five games of the regular season without Doncic, who leads the NBA in scoring (33.5 points per game) and fourth in assists (8.3), and Reaves, who is averaging 23.3 points, 5.5 assists and 4.7 rebounds.

Each player was injured in the first half of a blowout loss Thursday to Oklahoma City, but returned to play in the second half.

“I know Luka is going to do everything he can to get back on the field,” Redick said. “We don’t know what that recovery timeline looks like.”

The Lakers will likely have to rely more on LeBron James, a role the 41-year-old is more than willing to take on. James was tabbed as the third option behind Doncic and Reaves, but he is still averaging 20.6 points per game, 6.9 assists and 6.0 rebounds in his 23rd season.

“It’s probably going to be a little different with Luka not being there,” James said after practice. “I’m going to figure that out and then obviously the coaches will figure it out as well.”

The Lakers are making the mental adjustment to playing without Doncic. After the Mavericks, they have tough games against Oklahoma City, Golden State and Phoenix before finishing against lowly Utah on April 12.

“I mean, it’s a challenge for us,” James said. “It always has to be the next man [mentality]. But there’s no way to replace that kind of impact. So it’s going to be a collective group. We all need to find a way to do a little more. But even now you have to be even stricter about what we do. When you lose a special player like that, you can’t make as many mistakes. So we need to understand this.

For Redick, speaking for the first time since Doncic’s injury was announced, he needed to check his team’s temperature to make sure his group was in the right space.

Saturday practice on Southern Methodist’s campus helped.

“I think it’s just making sure everyone’s in the right mindset first, and then you know we’ve been working on just offensive things, just cleaning up some things and being really explicit about what we want to execute,” Redick said. “I had a few offensive breakdowns. It was definitely more of an offensive day.

“We worked on defense to start practice, but that’s our main focus again. How to score, how to score effectively, and our defense again is we’re interchangeable. We’ve been interchangeable now for two and a half months.”

Controversy over James

James created a bit of controversy when he said in the “Bob Does Sports” YouTube video that Memphis should move to Nashville.

“I’m not the first guy to talk about it in the NBA. We all like, ‘You need to move. Just go to Nashville,” James said.

James, when asked if he wanted to clarify his comments, then mentioned Milwaukee as one of his least favorite cities as well.

“I also said Milwaukee,” James said. “I’m 41 years old (and) there are two cities I don’t like playing in right now – and that’s Milwaukee and that’s Memphis. What’s your problem with that? I don’t like going home [to Cleveland,] either. …And I’m from there. People are ridiculous. They also get angry with my son [Bronny James] being on the [Lakers] the team too.

“So, what are we talking about? People need to find other ways to devote their energy to other things that are important. Like, seriously? I’m not talking about the city, like people in Memphis. I don’t like staying at the Hyatt Centric [hotel]. What’s wrong with that? Nothing. What are we talking about? What are we talking about? People need to relax.