The Los Angeles Lakers are showing early on this season that they're fully committed to resting Luka Doncic. The Lakers kept Luka out of the second leg of their first back-to-back of the year (Oct. 28 vs. the Clippers on the road), and they also sat Doncic on November 8 vs. the Pistons on the road, the first leg of another back-to-back.
Notably, Luka did play the Nov. 1-Nov. 2 back-to-back against the Raptors and Heat at home (both wins for the Lakers). So, it's not like LA is ruling out Doncic for all back-to-backs. And speaking of "backs", it's "lower back tightness" that's been attached to Doncic in his injury reports on the occasions he's been ruled out.
Is this a clever ploy from LA's load-management playbook, or is Luka genuinely hurt? It's probably a little bit of both. Either way, the Lakers are smart for resting Doncic, even this early in the year.
Lakers' rest plan for Luka Doncic shows that they know what they're doing
The following two things are tough to argue with: 1) Luka Doncic is incapable of playing an entire 82-game schedule and entering a postseason healthy, and 2) The Lakers have zero chance of contending without a healthy Luka Doncic in the postseason.
With that in mind, the Lakers need to be wise about conserving Luka's workload over the course of the regular season. It's tempting to overwork the best offensive engine in the sport (doing so wins games for you now!), but the Lakers must exercise prudence with Luka's minutes and games played if they want him to be in one piece come April and May.
We saw what happened last season, with Luka missing the entire playoffs and the Lakers having no shot at advancing in the postseason (past the second round) without him.
We also saw the state of Luka's body in the 2024 NBA Finals, when Doncic had to be essentially mummified in ice packs every time he came out of the game in that Mavericks-Celtics series (which Dallas lost).
The Lakers must never ignore that Luka Doncic's body must be conserved
If there's one glaring weakness in Luka's profile as an NBA basketball player, it's that his body does tend to break down. But with Luka taking much better care of his conditioning since coming to LA, and with the Lakers being proactive about his workload, we can all reasonably hope that Doncic is strong and healthy in this year's playoffs. The NBA is much worse whenever he's not.
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