How good are the Los Angeles Lakers without Luka Doncic? That is something they will need to figure out following his forced exit from Thursday night's lopsided 139-96 beatdown to the Oklahoma City Thunder due to a hamstring injury.
Doncic was playing MVP-level basketball all season long. His month of March was absolutely absurd. To no one's surprise, that lined up with the Lakers' best stretch of the campaign. Los Angeles posted an incredible 15-2 record during the calendar month, only topped by the Thunder's 14-1 mark.
The Lakers were flying high, the vibes were through the roof, and bolder assessments of the team's upside were starting to form. Now, Los Angeles will get to answer just how resilient they are without their best player.
Thus far in 2025-26, the Lakers have posted a 7-6 record in the games Doncic has missed. Their remaining schedule is manageable. However, that would be far more true for a team that was featuring arguably the best player on the planet right now.
Lakers will find out who they are without Luka Doncic
Has this Lakers roster overachieved due to Doncic? They will certainly hope to prove the opposite.
The Lakers' five remaining games come against a collection of teams with a winning percentage of .479. That is the 14th easiest schedule of all 30 teams in the NBA moving forward. The toughest contests left are a rematch with the Thunder and a meeting with the Phoenix Suns.
The good news? The Lakers have two more stars who can be asked for added production. LeBron James has made it pretty clear recently that this is a tight-knit group, too. When asked how that gets tested after the game was over, James offered a reassuring message.
"Nothing has changed. We still will be," LeBron said of the team staying together. "We'll be tested, obviously, with the head of the snake [gone]. Don't want to make no conclusions, but we'll see what happens with him, and then we'll go from there. But nothing has rattled."
The worst version of how the story could go with Doncic's injury would have him on a timeline that forces missed action in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. Hopefully for everyone involved, that does not happen.
It is a bit cliched, but this truly comes across as a make-or-break moment for the Lakers. James and company will need to hold down the fort until their superstar engine is back. Otherwise, things could devolve very quickly in Los Angeles.