Luka Doncic suffered a left leg contusion in Saturday’s 103-88 loss by the Los Angeles Lakers to the LA Clippers and did not return after halftime. The injury occurred during the first half at Intuit Dome. Doncic scored 12 points on 4-of-13 shooting with five rebounds, two assists and four turnovers before exiting.
JJ Redick confirmed Doncic could not continue after halftime. The team trailed 54-39 at the break.
“I saw him hobbling towards the end of the first half. He came to me at halftime and said he couldn’t go,” Redick said after the game.
A source told ESPN the injury resulted from a collision with Clippers guard Bogdan Bogdanovic. Doncic left the arena without speaking to reporters.
“I don’t have any other information,” Redick said.
Doncic previously missed three games in October with a left leg contusion. Saturday’s injury appears unrelated to that incident.
Los Angeles played without three other starters as Austin Reaves, Deandre Ayton and Rui Hachimura were sidelined with injuries. Dalton Knecht replaced Doncic in the starting lineup for the second half.
LeBron James scored a season-high 36 points on 15-of-28 shooting. The rest of the Lakers shot 19-for-60 from the field and 3-for-31 from three-point range.
“No matter what the circumstances are, it’s still next man up,” James said afterward. “We’re all professionals. We all got to stay ready. So, obviously it’s very challenging circumstances for our ball club tonight, but I think we played extremely hard, we followed our keys. We just came up short.”
The Lakers shot 6-for-38 from three-point range as a team and missed seven free throws. James helped reduce a 22-point third-quarter deficit to seven points early in the fourth quarter.
“We just didn’t hit shots tonight,” Jake LaRavia said. “I mean, that’s really what it was. We were 6-for-38 from 3 [as a team], we missed seven free throws. Tough to win basketball games like that. I thought we played really, really hard. But yeah, shots just were not falling.”
Redick did not rule out Reaves and Ayton returning for Tuesday’s game at the Phoenix Suns. He said Hachimura could miss 3-5 days with his groin injury.
The loss dropped Los Angeles to 19-8, fourth in the Western Conference. The Lakers visit Phoenix on Tuesday before hosting Houston on Christmas Day.
“The worst thing about sports is injuries,” James said. “And not just basketball, but sports in general. You control the controllables, but what we have out there, whoever is in uniform, we have to go out and execute at the utmost pace that we can and on the other end, we got to defend on a string and help each other out.”
Doncic leads the NBA in scoring at 35.2 points per game while averaging 9.1 assists and 8.8 rebounds.