There’s a quiet tension hanging over the Western Conference semifinals between the Lakers and 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.
Lakers superstar Luka Doncic, who has been sidelined since April 2, is not expected to return at least until Game 3 of the series against the Thunder. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect 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 Sunday that 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-old LeBron James has 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.
“The Thunder are one of the greatest teams ever in NBA history,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “That’s just the reality, they’re that good.”
So, how do you defeat one of the greatest teams ever assembled without the NBA’s leading scorer this season?
Elevation and belief.“We’ve talked for the last three weeks about elevating. Now we have to elevate even more,” Redick said. “The belief is there, and it’s growing. The thing I love about the playoffs is you can only worry about the task at hand, and the task at hand is the Oklahoma City Thunder.”
Thunder forward Jalen Williams could suit up as early as Game 1 of the second-round series against the Lakers. NBAE via Getty Images In another part of the country, Thunder small forward Jalen Williams is dealing with a Grade 1 hamstring strain. Far less severe than Doncic’s. Williams suffered the injury in Game 2 of the first-round series against the Suns. It comes with a one- to two-week recovery timeline. Game 1 falls on the latter.
“He’s chipping away at his rehab. He’s doing a good job,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said Saturday.
Daigneault’s comments suggest progress. It’s more than reasonable that Williams could be ready for Game 1. But even if he can’t go, the Thunder have already proven they can thrive without him.
OKC went 18-1 without him to start the season. He only played in 33 regular-season games, and the Thunder still had the NBA’s best record. They swept the Suns without blinking. Their ecosystem is built around reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and it doesn’t collapse when a piece is removed. It simply adapts and keeps moving like a machine that doesn’t need every gear to spin perfectly to still crush everything in its path.
And that’s the biggest difference between the injuries in this series.
For the Lakers, Doncic is the sun that everything revolves around.
Redick confirmed that the Lakers are already preparing for Williams to be available in Game 1, but when it came to Doncic’s status, he was more succinct: “No update.”
Unfortunately for the Lakers, the playoffs don’t wait for healing. They expose whatever isn’t ready.
The Lakers are historic underdogs entering this series. They lost all four games in the regular season to OKC by an average margin of nearly 30 points, the biggest point differential between playoff opponents in NBA history.
“I feel like a lot of us on this team have been underdogs in life, especially in our journey with basketball,” said Lakers forward Jake LaRavia about their odds of winning without Doncic.
Sadly for the underdogs, this series won’t be decided by adjustments or elevation or belief. It will be decided by absence.
And Doncic’s absence is the loudest sound in basketball.
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