There’s a quiet tension hanging over the Western Conference semifinals between theLakersand the Thunder.
It’s an anxiety that you won’t find in a box score, but it hangs over every day in Los Angeles like a dark, impenetrable cloud.
It’s the absence ofLuka Doncic.
The MVP candidate’s absence lingers inside the Lakers’ practice facility and behind closed locker room doors. You can see it in the players’ and coaches’ minds when they deliver half-answers and tight smiles after being asked about their chances of beating the reigning champions without their best player.
The Thunder are dealing with an injury to a starting player as well, but let’s start with Doncic because everything about this series begins and ends with him. Since being traded to the Lakers last February, he has been the team’s engine and metronome. Without him, the Lakers are not just different, they’re diminished in ways that no number of film sessions or rah-rah speeches can mask.
Yes, they got past the Rockets without him in six grueling games, but that team did not have Kevin Durant, one of the greatest scorers in NBA history, available for most of that series.
Doncic is dealing with a Grade 2 hamstring strain suffered April 2. And right now, nearly five weeks removed, he’s still tethered. He’s been able to do light on-court movement and some spot shooting. No full-speed running. No contact. No 1-on-1 drills. In other words, he’s still a ways away from being available in this series.
Sources told The California Post on Sundaythat he’s expected to miss at least the first two games of the series. That news was not unexpected, but it’s still hard to swallow for Lakers fans hoping to defy the odds for the second consecutive series.
Without Doncic on the floor, 41-year-oldLeBron Jameshas to become the primary playmaker again. Austin Reaves will have to stretch his role even further as a creator and lethal 3-point shooter. Luke Kennard needs to step up. Every possession in the series will need to get slower, tighter and more desperate. The margin for error in this series goes from razor-thin against the Rockets to microscopic.
And against this Thunder team, microscopic might as well mean nonexistent.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
