INGLEWOOD — Lakers star Luka Doncic made an early exit from Saturday night’s loss to the Clippers because of a leg injury.
The Lakers ruled Doncic out of the game at halftime because of a left leg contusion.
It wasn’t immediately clear how Doncic suffered the injury. Doncic left Intuit Dome without speaking to reporters postgame.
“I saw him hobbling towards the end of the first half, he came to me at halftime and said he couldn’t go,” Coach JJ Redick said. “That’s all I have.”
Second-year wing Dalton Knecht started the second half in place of Doncic, who struggled in the first half.
Doncic finished with 12 points on 4-of-13 shooting (1 for 6 from 3-point range) and four turnovers to go with five rebounds and a pair of assists in 20 minutes in the opening two quarters, with the Lakers trailing 54-39 at halftime after trailing by 17 in the opening half.
Doncic came into the night leading the NBA in scoring with a career-best 35.2 points per game to go with 9.1 assists, 8.8 rebounds and 1.7 steals.
The Lakers were already down three of their normal starters before Saturday’s game tipped off: guard Austin Reaves, center Deandre Ayton and forward Rui Hachimura.
“It just becomes an effort offense, effort defense game,” forward Jake LaRavia said. “You’re losing Luka, who obviously is averaging a lot of points. Austin is averaging a lot of points. Rui’s out, averaging a good amount of points. Gabe, we’re down bodies, Deandre. So just that next-man-up mentality, it’s kind of just expected of the rest of the guys. We have that group.”
The Lakers trailed by double digits for the entire third quarter before cutting their deficit to seven (80-73) after a LaRavia layup with 7:56 remaining in the game.
The Clippers took back control of the game, putting the Lakers at 4-4 so far in December and 19-8 on the season.
“Whatever in the game presents itself, we got to be ready for the challenge,” forward LeBron James said. “It doesn’t matter. The worst thing about sports is injuries. 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.”
James scored a season-high 36 points on 15-of-28 shooting (3 for 7 from 3-point range) in 38 minutes against the Clippers. The rest of the Lakers scored 56 points on 19-of-60 shooting (3 for 31 from behind the arc).
The status of the Lakers’ injured players for Tuesday’s road game against the Phoenix Suns wasn’t known as of Saturday night. The team is scheduled to practice on Monday.
“No matter what the circumstances are, it’s still next man up,” James said. “We’re all professionals. We all got to stay ready. Obviously, it’s very challenging circumstances for our ball club, but I think we played extremely hard, we followed our keys. We just came up short.”