The first version of this article lasted all of about 55 minutes before Austin Reaves was ruled out for the regular season and likely the playoffs with a Grade 2 oblique strain. He will join Luka Dončić, who is out for the rest of the regular season and likely the first round of the playoffs with a Grade 2 hamstring strain
Luka’s injury alone was going to cause widespread ripple effects for the Lakers. Add Austin to the mix and everything is disrupted.
Austin is set to miss 4-6 weeks, which covers the whole first round and part of a second round series, if somehow that happens. The typical recovery time for a Grade 2 hamstring strain would rule Luka out for the first round and, similarly, jeopardize his availability for a second round series.
Those timelines feel like a formality now, though. Austin and Luka are out for the first round of the playoffs and, barring a miracle, the Lakers will be, too.
Where does that leave the purple and gold, then, moving forward, both in the short and long term?
The Lakers have five games remaining in the regular season and are not locked into a playoff seed yet. While it went under the radar last week, LA did clinch a playoff spot, meaning the play-in is out of the question.
The standings are still tight, however, with LA one game up on Denver and two games up on Houston in the fourth and fifth spots, respectively. Minnesota has taken a nosedive and is four games back of the Lakers in the sixth seed, so there is a floor for LA to fall.
Having the tiebreakers over both Denver and Houston will be huge.
The Lakers also don’t have a particularly daunting schedule, sans another meeting with Oklahoma City on Tuesday. They will play at Dallas on Sunday, the Thunder on Tuesday, at Golden State on Thursday, at home against Phoenix on Friday and at home against Utah to wrap up the season.
Having said all that, making matters worse on Saturday was Denver beating the Spurs at home, pulling them closer to the Lakers. They will still play San Antonio and Oklahoma City one more time each in its final four games.
As for Houston, they play at Golden State and Phoenix before hosting the Sixers, Wolves and Grizzlies to end the season. While they’ve won five games in a row, the only win against a non-tanking team in that span was the Knicks.
It feels likely that the floor for the Lakers will be the fifth seed, though there is a worst-case scenario of LA going winless and Minnesota going undefeated, dropping them all the way to sixth.
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MIAMI, FLORIDA – MARCH 19: Austin Reaves #15 and LeBron James #23 of the Los Angeles Lakers speak during the fourth quarter against the Miami Heat at Kaseya Center on March 19, 2026 in Miami, Florida. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, User is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. (Photo by Rich Storry/Getty Images) Getty Images
Remember the 2013 playoffs? I wouldn’t blame you if you memory-holed that series against the Spurs in which the Lakers lost player after player after player.
In the fourth and final game of that matchup, LA started Darius Morris and Andrew Goudelock in the backcourt with Earl Clark at small forward. Chris Duhon played 43 minutes off the bench.
The playoffs this year are going to resemble that a little too closely.
LA still has talented players available, but this team is going to be so drastically different from the one in the regular season that it’s going to be hard to win a game. LeBron is going to have to go from third fiddle to carrying the offense again, something he may not even be able to do at 41.
A whole lot of role players who had spent months learning how to play alongside Luka now are going to have drastically different roles. Players who probably shouldn’t be relied upon for offense are going to need to score to even be competitive.
In that sense, it feels irrelevant who they play in the first round now because of how outmatched they’re going to be. Success for this team is going to look more like being competitive and maybe stealing a win, which is a damn shame considering where this team was even at the start of the week.
The summer is going to be full of decisions for the Lakers and they’re now going to have to make them without seeing the best version of this team in the playoffs.
In fact, with the injuries they dealt with during the season, the sample size of the recent, idealized version of the Lakers is about a dozen games. It was a really good dozen games, but it was also a dozen games that ended in a dismantling by the Thunder.
The playoffs were supposed to serve as the big stress test for the team to learn if this really worked, particularly against the top teams, and where they needed changes. We’re not even going to get a glimpse of that now with so many players likely being slotted into unfamiliar roles in the postseason.
Instead, the front office will have to make decisions this summer with an incomplete data set.
Is it worth bringing LeBron back this summer or is it time to rip off the band-aid? Do they need another center this summer? Two new centers? How do some of the Lakers’ role players set for free agency hold up in the playoffs alongside Luka like Rui Hachimura or Luke Kennard?
These are all questions this front office won’t have fully satisfactory answers on, which is what makes this injury such a gut punch.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
