Lakers lose Reaves (oblique) for remainder of regular season

DALLAS – With the team already reeling from Luka Doncic’s left hamstring strain diagnosis that will sideline him indefinitely, the Los Angeles Lakers announced Saturday that Austin Reaves has been diagnosed with a Grade 2 left oblique muscle injury and will be out for the remainder of the regular season.

Although the team gave no timetable for his return, sources told ESPN’s Shams Charania that Reaves is expected to miss four to six weeks with his injury.

Reaves underwent an MRI on his oblique/rib area on Saturday. He was initially considered questionable to play against the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday.

Marcus Smart was ruled out against the Mavs on Saturday – his seventh straight game missed – while Jarred Vanderbilt was added to the injury report as questionable due to right calf soreness.

Despite the team’s shortfall in numbers, coach JJ Redick said earlier Saturday that the Lakers’ resolve was strong.

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

LA (50-27) has a one-game lead over the No. 4 Denver Nuggets, a two-game lead over the No. 5 Houston Rockets and a three-game lead over the No. 6 Minnesota Timberwolves with five games remaining. The Lakers also host the tiebreaker against these three teams, having already won the season series against each of the others.

The team announced Friday that Doncic suffered a Grade 2 left hamstring strain, an injury that typically involves a month-long recovery. The Lakers did not provide a timetable for Doncic’s return beyond the remainder of the regular season. The first round of the NBA playoffs begins in two weeks.

Reaves tweaked his left side during the first half of the Lakers’ 139-96 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday. He returned to the locker room for evaluation, but returned to the game and finished with a team-high 15 points in 27 minutes.

“I came back for a rebound, a little overextended, and I felt something,” Reaves said after the game. “But I feel good right now, so we’ll see.”

Reaves required two MRI scans of the injury after the first scanned the wrong area of ​​his body.

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

With Doncic out and Reaves’ status unknown, Redick said Los Angeles would divide the offensive burden among a handful of players, citing the names of LeBron James, Luke Kennard, Rui Hachimura and Deandre Ayton.

“I mean, it’s a challenge for us,” James said after practice. “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 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 have to understand this. »

James had moved to the Lakers’ third option during their recent hot streak, with Doncic and Reaves handling most of the point guard duties. In his last seven games, James has averaged 15.6 points on 46.3% shooting (25.0% from 3), 7.3 rebounds and 7.3 assists. He averaged just 11.7 field goal attempts during that stretch, well below his career average of 18.6 per game.

“You have to change your mindset a little bit when your role changes, whatever the case may be, or what’s needed outside of [you for] team,” James said when asked how he would prepare mentally for the challenge ahead. “So the mindset changes a little bit, for sure.”

Redick said he plans to expand the rotation in the meantime, from nine players to possibly 11 and mentioned that Kobe Bufkin, Nick Smith Jr. and Dalton Knecht will all join the team in Dallas after playing for the South Bay Lakers in the G League playoffs.

“All hands on deck,” Redick added.

After playing the Mavs on Sunday, the Lakers will play three straight games against teams that will factor into the Western Conference playoff 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 team is playing really extremely hard…” James said of Dallas. “They just fought against Orlando. We know we have OKC. We have Golden State, which is still fighting. We have Phoenix, which is still fighting. So, it’s still going to be a little tough for us. So, we have to be ready for that.”

Upon news of Reaves’ injury, DraftKings took Los Angeles 120-1 to win the NBA Finals and 80-1 to win the Western Conference. Before Friday, the Lakers were 30-1 in the title game and 15-1 in the conference, but news of Doncic’s injury dropped them to 100-1 and 60-1, respectively.

ESPN’s Doug Greenberg contributed to this report.