Disaster: Luka Leaves With Hamstring Injury, Lakers Blown Out by Thunder 139-96

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A disastrous night for the Lakers as Luke Adonchich leaves early in the second half

with a hamstring injury is going to get an MRI on Friday and, oh, by the way, the Lakers

lose by 45, we'll unpack it all next.

You are Lockdown Lakers, your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast

Network, your team every day.

Thanks to everybody for joining Lockdown Lakers on Brian Kiminetski with Andy Kiminetski

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You know it is a bad night, Andy, when the losing by 45 in a highly anticipated match between

the Lakers and the Oklahoma City Thunder isn't even close to the worst thing that happened

on Tuesday.

I'm sorry, Thursday night.

This was a disastrous evening for the Lakers.

Final score 139 to 96, but like I said, that is not what anybody is thinking about or talking

about, at least in the immediate aftermath, it is Luke Adonchich who left the game with

a hamstring injury early in the third quarter and obviously did not return.

The Lakers announced before the game was even over, which is quick and we'll talk about

what it might mean.

That Luca is going to get an MRI on Friday and then they'll obviously release more information

after that.

This is not good, Andy, not good.

It's crazy, like March ended on such an incredibly high note for this team.

Luke Adonchich won his consecutive correct Western conference player of the month awards.

He was nominated for a defensive player of the month award, which until today, Thursday,

when this was announced by the league that Luca had been one of the nominees, Brian and

I have been covering the Lakers and the league for like 20 years.

I had no idea this existed.

Not a clue.

There was such a thing as a defensive player of the month, but the fact that Luca Adonchich,

who has been savaged for a lot of his career and has been controversial in the MVP race,

which he may be out of now because he is one of the implications of just injury beyond

even just MVP.

The irony, and in a lot of ways, just how limitless the possibilities felt were embodied

by Luca being nominated for this defensive award.

JJ Reddick was nominated for coach of the month.

There's been a lot of growing buzz about what the Lakers could potentially do in the playoffs.

Luca rising in the MVP race, all of that stuff, you know, LeBron, adjustments and driving

to this new role.

We are 48 hours into April.

Wolf.

April sucks.

Wolf.

So, you know, there are, I mean, there's just a massive list of implications from this.

The MVP thing was, you know, this was intended to be or built up to be perhaps, you know, an

opportunity for Luca to make a statement about the NBA.

All of that went out the window, even before the injury just based on how the Lakers were

getting pasted in this game.

Frankly, I mean, before the injury, Luca was not playing particularly well in the game.

SGA wasn't dominant in this game, and it was obviously better than Luca, and the thunder

just blowing out the Lakers kind of, I think, would have ended that debate anyway.

But the larger question now is whether or not Luca's going to be able to play enough

games to qualify for any awards, whether the, you know, first team all NBA and any of

that stuff, the playoffs or the regular season ends in a little over a week.

The Lakers, he would have to play one more game.

This was his 64th game.

He would need to play one more to qualify for that 65 game threshold, and it needs to

be somewhere, but I think about 20 minutes for it to count.

So you have that, and then the bigger thing becomes the postseason, which is about two

weeks away, slightly more than two weeks away, like two weeks in a day, give or take, depending

on when the Lakers open, if they open on a Saturday or Sunday.

So, you know, hamstrings are tricky to say the least, and I am, you know, we do not know

what it is.

It is going, there's going to be an MRI again on Friday.

There will be some sort of diagnosis on that, but it's rare when you get that kind

of pull that it's not a week, a couple weeks or something like that, maybe we get super

lucky in his day to day, it is reasonable.

It is not, you know, sky is falling clickbait to say that the, certainly the rest of the

regular season, and then the first round of the playoffs for Luca is threatened by what

we saw on Thursday, hopefully not, but it's on the table for sure.

Well, some perspective from Jeff Stotz on Twitter at In Street close, he's considered

one of the premier sports injury guys and expert, he logs all this stuff, he's been on

the show before he, he is an expert on sports injuries in particular, the NBA, he tweeted

out, quote, still a lot of details to sort through regarding don't, which is hamstring

injury, but there's a lot on the line.

This season, the average time loss for non-descript hamstring strains, that being, we don't know

all the details yet.

In the NBA has been 22 days, which he said is roughly nine games.

That's higher than the historical averages of 12.1 days, roughly five games, five games

would obviously take Luca out of the regular season and the grand scheme of things who

cares.

I mean, there could be seating who cares.

Yeah, there could be seating implications, but right now, until we know Luca's situation,

seed is the least of their concern because if they don't have Luca, I don't care if they

somehow end up the one seed, they ain't going to be long for this ride.

So, it's interesting too, Luca, like I said, was not playing well at all before the injury,

he was in a little under 26 minutes, three of 10 from the field for 12 points, seven assists

against six turnovers, one of seven from behind the arc.

I thought a shot selection in this game was actually pretty bad.

Yeah.

And they're very...

There are so many aspects of the game itself, yeah, the reason I'm bringing it back.

Well, the reason I'm bringing this up in particular right now with Luca isn't necessarily

for the game analysis that we're going to get into, given that he was perhaps dealing

with this heading into the game, certainly dealing with it in the first half because

JJ said after the game that they evaluated him, they medically cleared him.

Luca said he wanted to go back in and then eventually it got worse and he left.

I wonder how much of this he was dealing with in this game that led to the shots that often

seemed hurried and settled maybe because he didn't feel the type of burst that he would

need to get into the pain or to keep defenders on his hips, anything like that.

Some of the turnovers that he had were pretty much everyone in this team, a lot of unforested stuff.

From top to bottom, not a single Laker played well in this game.

You wonder how much, especially with what we know about Luca now, how much that was affecting him

before the game even started as the game progressed, but things were going poorly before it reached

this holy bleep. What's next moment?

If you want to take a look at the standings, we'll talk about the game a little bit because it's

not holy irrelevant what happened here, particularly now that with this injury, at least the statistical

probability of the Lakers finishing fourth instead of third, certainly goes up. I don't think

you can concede that yet, just based on who the Lakers play down the stretch. When you look at

the standings, the Lakers finish play on Thursday a game up on Denver. Denver's won seven in a row.

They're playing quite well. That's a game lead for the Lakers, which functionally is two games because

they own the tiebreaker. Lakers have five games left, one against the tanking Dallas team, one against

the tanking Utah team. They've got Phoenix, they've got Oklahoma City again, and who am I forgetting, Andy?

Golden State, who are certainly obviously trying to play their way. Well, actually, Golden State

isn't going to be able to get into the nine seed. So, there, they're,

there, Steph is trying to play like Steph is looking to play out as many of the rest of the regular

season games as they can. For nothing, no other reason than to try to get enough rhythm

to get them out of the play in. They actually have had very little luck historically in the play

in itself. The Warriors are not very good, regardless. I wouldn't treat them as a tanker because

they want to win, but they may function as a tanking team because they're just not very good.

So, I look at this as three games against teams that they, you know, certainly could beat without

Luca. And then, you know, Phoenix, we'll see. And obviously, Oklahoma City is a challenge.

But that could be enough to hold on to the three. It will almost certainly be enough to hold

on to the four. The Lakers have a two and a half game lead on Houston, which is functionally a three

and a half game lead given the tie breakers. So, essentially, if the Lakers win another game this season,

they'll almost certainly finish in the four. That's a big deal.

I bet Dallas would like to help them. Yeah, no, right. I mean, it's helpful to have a team

that would be like, no, seriously. I don't even know if Utah is going to feel the team for that

last game. They might not. They might not. And so, you know, all of this is, all of this is relevant.

And, you know, the Lakers ought to be able to open on their home floor. They do not need to rush

Luke a back to, you know, stay out of the play in to, you know, make sure they make the playoffs to

go from five to four, which would be a really big deal in terms of the difference between

starting that series on the road versus starting at home. So, next, let's start talking about

what the rest of the regular season could look like. And then we'll obviously start breaking

into what happened in this game because it was a disaster before Luke had got hurt. So, all that's

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So, a quick reminder about the everydayer club. Go to lockdownlakers.supercast.com,

check it out, see if it's for you. Even though it's April 80, you can still get the first month

free if you use the code March. It's a five bucks a month, 50 bucks a year, you get

unlock, you can unlock ad free episodes, you get entry into the private discord server

where you get the group chat where you can talk to me, you can talk to Andy, you can talk to

other hosts and other locked on listeners. So, again, lockdownlakers.supercast.com, check it out

in the show notes as well, see if it's for you. The injury news going into the game actually was

encouraging because while Marcus Smart missed his sixth game, he is expected to return perhaps

as early as Sunday against the Mavericks. We'll see what it all that looks like, but the

Lakers even saying, hey, there's a chance he could be on the floor before the end of the weekend

is for people like us who have been kind of getting nervous about his status and worrying if this

injury could be potentially lingering or more problematic than it was initially thought.

That was really good news. It was all downhill from there. Before Luca got hurt, Austin Reeves did

something to his sort of side lower back. JJ referred to it as an intercostal type injury.

Don't know if that was the official diagnosis. That's just JJ showing off the vocabular.

I actually did hurt an intercostal rib thing when I was in college or right after college,

and it was miserable. He left, he did leave the floor at one point and go back into the locker room

and get checked out. He was able to come back into the game. Like everyone else, Austin did not

have a good night. Austin actually, Austin in lawful at the beginning. I was going to say, to be clear,

Austin just so people do not misinterpret this. Austin is not the reason that they fell into the

hole like the sole reason, but he was one of the, he had a starring role. He had four turnovers,

I think in the first five minutes. All of them unforced. A couple of them just really lazy passes.

A couple of bad defensive sequences. He just was completely off to start this game and

those turnovers played a very big role in not just putting them in a hole, but also just

setting a tone in this game where we have not, we have not seen this for a while. The Lakers,

it's not just that they got blown out. Like Brian and I have covered championship teams,

championship teams. And I'm not saying the Lakers are. I'm just saying as the high mark comparison,

championship teams every now and then get their asses handed them. Like even in the playoffs,

we have seen that before. The Lakers though just got on tilt in this game so quickly in ways that

they seemed completely forget just unable to fix and iron out. They, they seem like what the hell

is happening. They, they just were knocked off their game so quickly on both sides of the ball,

the offense and the defense just completely evolved. So much was happening on the perimeter because

they seemed unable to just either penetrate or pass the ball inside. It was like in the,

the opening, I believe 24 points, the Lakers had 11 of them were at the line. Like other than

getting to the line, they were having trouble getting anything going at all and they could not

defend to save their lives. Well, we'll get back to the injury stuff here in a minute as long

as we're sort of on the game now. I mean, it's, they've played a lot of good teams of late and

have played very well against those teams. But this was obviously a highly motivated Oklahoma City

team that is more or less intact. They did, they didn't have Alex Karusa who's sick.

But we, we said going in like this was going to be a challenge just because of the way that the

thunder can defend. I mean, their offense has been kind of mid over the last month or so. But

their defense is off the charts and when they're particularly when they're, you know, fully engaged,

fully motivated and all that kind of stuff. And that's exactly what we saw. The Lakers just had

a tremendous amount of trouble getting into basic offensive sets and trying to run what they

were doing. It was, it was, it was almost difficult to tell what they were trying to do and what

exactly Oklahoma City was doing other than putting it out on the floor. A lot of very aggressive,

very physical defenders. Lakers missed a bunch of shots early when they didn't turn them all over

than they did miss. You can't, you can't give up possessions against a team as good as Oklahoma

City. Forget, forget the other side, forget the opportunities, you know, in transition then that

the, you know, Oklahoma City gets and whatever. The sheer lack of attempts at the basket

are enormously distraught. If they, if Oklahoma City didn't score a point off of LAs turnovers

in the first quarter and by the way they did. But even if they didn't just robbing yourselves of

the attempts at the bucket are, you know, is a recipe for failure against the team that's that good.

Here are some of the stats in this game that break down not just the ways that the Lakers

lost this game, but the ways that you will truly lose a game to the Oklahoma City Thunder.

18 turnovers, not all in the first quarter though it felt that way. 18 turnovers in which

OKC converted into 24 points. 32 OKC fast break points. 64 OKC points in the paint. OKC had

13 offensive rebounds that they turned into 18 second chance points. Like I tweeted out during

the game at Can Brothers. There was some point where the Lakers were down 10 nothing in second chance

points. Like it felt like even when OKC was missing they were still winning. Oh yeah.

And and the Lakers got lost defensively on so many scramble possessions. Like Luke Canard stood

out to me as somebody that tonight just was completely lost defensively like not staying with

the guy that clearly he needed to, but he had a he just jumped out of me as the guy that maybe

was the most, but everybody in this game you can look at specific breakdowns. I remember there

was a sequence where Luca attempted to jump what he thought was going to be a passing lane and

ended up a ball fake. The ball got reversed and all of a sudden OKC was playing 5 on 4. Not

that they even needed the advantage. They could have scored 5 on 7 in this game, but it just

everybody had moments you know Isaiah Joe hit close to in the third quarter back to back to back

three pointers. Like pretty close to successive possessions wide open. That guy is only out there

to shoot threes. He was wide open. Oh yeah. I mean I mean it happened. No and by the third quarter

I mean especially laid by the way I was looking you know kind of as we record the show live on YouTube

kind of flipping through see if anything pops up. I did just see trending right now on Twitter

in the United States. Just the word hamstring. Just not Luca don't you hamstring not

just hamstring. It happens when you're a laker baby. You can make you can make a muscle.

Everybody knows who's hamstring they're talking about. That's right. Hollywood. All right so

wouldn't happen in Dallas. I'll tell you that much. No and like you know the defensive breakdowns

particularly early like when even when the Lakers, Oklahoma City was shooting the ball very well.

I glued door to think made his first four three three points. Yeah 14 points in the first quarter.

You know and Shay Shay for when it was all said and done. I mean Shay needed 28 shots to score

25 shots to score 28. He wasn't you know living at the line. He didn't destroy me. He didn't

30 minutes but he didn't destroy the lake like it wasn't like I just a question of Shay annihilated

them. When they managed to play decent defense, Oklahoma City hit the shot anyway when they didn't

manage to play good defense, Oklahoma City hit the shot anyway. But the part that I think was

when you roll over the offense though was incredible. Yeah he was great. Shay was great. I'm not

I'm not I'm just saying it wasn't like he was you know he scored 52 points on you know 21

Sunday and you just bucket after bucket after bucket after bucket. The problem for the Lakers

was certainly with Shay and you know chat and whoever you know all up and down Lakers could not

key to Oklahoma City out of the out of the pain. They could not prevent that initial first step to

get people in the pain. Now everybody's moving everybody's trying to rotate. They worked very quickly

against you know Lakers switches and some of these defensive adjustments they wanted to try to

make and really didn't allow the Lakers to get into them. So it was just there's a really

aggressive and solid game plan for Oklahoma City and the Lakers were on the wrong foot

for the entire game. So we'll break down a little bit more of what this kind of represents going

forward. What the Lakers need to do I guess for the rest of the regular season all that coming up next.

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so on what was truly an aside from that Mrs Lincoln how did you enjoy the play kind of night

for the Lakers and Lakers fans the big question becomes kind of where do you go from here like my

initial thought when they were getting their bleeps kicked during the first half was okay now I'm

really interested in the rematch because this will be the second time that Oklahoma City this season

has absolutely destroyed the Lakers and so you know they played them very well last year

the last and that was played which which was without both Luca and chef if memory serves

a little bit harder kind of tell anything from that but it was a much closer game

so given now especially that the Lakers couldn't have a better chance of seeing Oklahoma City

in a second round matchup should they get that far I was really interested in what that

rematch was going to look like what were the Lakers going to bring to that game on their home floor

after being humiliated again by this team can you show that you know what we can play with them

so if we do see them in the playoffs this is not going to be a five game series or you know

or even a four game series that obviously goes out the window with Luca injured I would be

playing again in five days I would be very surprised if Luca's on the floor for that game let me

take this a step further because I don't think surprised is actually the correct

emotion for this unless the MRI comes back and it says your hamstring is fine this was all psychosomatic

get your bleak together Luca I will be angry if he plays in this game because it seems

wholly irresponsible for Luca given the the stakes moving forward with the playoffs and

this team ain't going nowhere now if forget just look at like it unavailable if Lucas

compromised they are not likely going anywhere if Luca certainly not a deep I mean I could I

still see them beating Houston in the first round or something like that if that's who they get

right now it looks most like the lakers would get Houston in the first round if they drop into that

three seed there still is a chance that they can stay I'm sorry as as a foreseed it is not a

fort on conclusion they're going to drop down one more they do have a cushion over Denver and

enough soft games that you know unless if especially Denver loses a game between now in the end of

the season the lakers absolutely could still finish third in which case they'd probably get

a soda in the first round and again could they beat Minnesota without Luca sure does it get a lot

more difficult yeah although the the wolves may not have jade McDaniels he he is injured right now

and that's on his piece of what they they're looking to do with that with how they are expected

to have an impact right but but jade McDaniels either at half strength or absent is a big blow to

the wolves but Luca has no business whatsoever if this was bad enough that he couldn't finish this

game and it not just because JJ waved the white flag and if we don't address it in this show we

can maybe address it for the shorter show on Friday I've seen some comments whether in the chat or

also you know the comments section also on twitter at cambrothers questioning whether or questioning

why Luca was even back in the game after the half in the first place given how big the lakers were

down and this was something that need to be evaluated you could have similar questions about Austin

as well like I actually at one point thought Austin was I thought he had signaled for a sub to come

out and maybe I'm wrong maybe just took a little while I think he did in the first half he did

okay and then he went straight to the locker room like you know to get looked at well he when I

saw him signal it took a little while before he was eventually off the floor and maybe the right

could be wrong about that but I just yeah I'm not sure well we both saw the same thing if nothing

else but Luca has no business being on the floor on Tuesday at all like none it would be

whatever you think of Luca getting back into this game and for what it's worth

JJ said they checked him out he was cleared it is typically up to players to make their own decision

I understand the argument that maybe he needed to be overridden for his own good given the

true lack of probability they were back in his game they were not right this this is a medical

staff that is not exactly known for throwing caution to the wind like they are they have a

reputation around the league as being overly cautious so you can argue that they should have

just overruled Luca but I am willing to bet they were not cavalier about this and that doesn't

make the decision right but there's a difference well you will maybe break it down for for

Friday but like it's I um yeah you you look at at this I mean one other interesting wrinkle of it

just in terms of like the sort of the season long conversation that we've all been having about

this stuff is that uh Ant now we mentioned Anthony Edwards can't win uh who is ineligible for

postseason awards if Luca doesn't play we mentioned this at the beginning of the show but if Luca

doesn't play another game in the regular season he is ineligible so now like basically 80% of the

stars in the league are ineligible for postseason awards uh it is yet another reminder of why

this um this needs to change why it is going to change um you know the notion that Luca because

he played his 64 games and so 65 is somehow not worthy of uh a first team all NBA not is you're

not excited about uh 2026 MVP Jake Laravia I played 82 games yeah I mean honestly he is

closer to third team all NBA then you'd like to think um like they're just there aren't I

I someone will do a count of it just like literally how many players are even eligible for this

year well and it here's the thing too it also SGA was trending towards winning this thing anyway

but if he wins this thing in a way that feels like default that sucks for him because he's a great player

and you don't want his MVP you can debate whether or not you think it should have been Wendy or

Luca or Yoke at your whoever but you don't want it to be remembered as the MVP that SGA won

because Hunger Games took out the rest of the NBA and he's the only guy eligible and I don't think

it'll happen with SGA because like his his numbers are just that good and like you know of course

he'll have to beat Wendy and he'll have to beat uh Yoke and whatever but when he started

with you only has one more game I believe sure because he no you're right there's a against the

clippers I start you know close if it's he's close one game close and you know Wendy has made no

secret about how he wants to win in the game better Yoke is close yeah no they're all close except

for Shay like fortunately Shay's candidacy sort of stands on its own but you are going to find

a signature I know you that's not where you're saying but like you're where you really will see it

is second team all NBA third team all NBA where guys who no question probably a very nice seasons

but you just like really aren't gonna make some of these things so we'll talk a little bit more

obviously Friday afternoon assuming the Lakers release something whenever the MRI results are

released whether that's Friday afternoon whether it bleeds into Saturday whatever it is whenever

it happens we will make sure to update you here and I give you as much analysis about what it means

again just a terrible night for the Lakers that they hope isn't catastrophic when it's all

said and done there's a big difference between the two locked on Lakers on YouTube is where you

hang out with over 38,000 subscribers we'll see everyone next time