The Los Angeles Lakers announced Friday that guard Luka Doncic will miss the final five games of the regular season after an MRI in Dallas revealed a Grade 2 strain of his left hamstring.
Doncic sustained the injury during the third quarter of Thursday night’s 139-96 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder. A typical recovery from a Grade 2 strain is roughly four weeks, but the team did not provide a specific timeline beyond confirming he is out for the rest of the regular schedule.
Because the setback leaves the eight-year veteran at 64 appearances, he falls short of the NBA’s 65-game minimum for end-of-season awards. His agent, Bill Duffy of WME Basketball, told ESPN he will file an “Extraordinary Circumstances Challenge” in an effort to keep Doncic eligible.
“This season, Luka Doncic has performed at a historic level, leading the league in scoring, carrying the Lakers to third place in the Western Conference and placing himself in the middle of one of the most tightly contested MVP races in memory,” Duffy said. He referenced the two games Doncic missed in December for the birth of his second child in Slovenia, calling those absences “extraordinary circumstances.”
In ESPN’s final 2025-26 MVP straw poll of 100 media voters, Doncic ranked fourth behind Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Victor Wembanyama and Nikola Jokic.
Doncic’s first full season in Los Angeles concludes with league-best averages of 33.5 points, along with 8.3 assists (third in the NBA), 7.7 rebounds (second among guards) and 1.6 steals (sixth) per game.
The Lakers, already locked into the postseason, sit third in the Western Conference with contests remaining at the Dallas Mavericks and Golden State Warriors and home dates against the Thunder, Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz. Los Angeles leads the fourth-place Denver Nuggets by one game, the fifth-place Houston Rockets by 2.5 games and the sixth-place Minnesota Timberwolves by 3.5 games, holding the tiebreaker over all three clubs.
The opening round of the NBA playoffs begins Saturday, April 18.
Source: ESPN.com
