Hello, Lakers Nation. Welcome in to the Lakers Nation.com podcast. My name's Trevor Lane, and it's game day. Lakers Mavs, 4.30 p.m. Pacific time. What's left of the Lakers anyway after they've been decimated by injuries. But 4.30 p.m. Pacific time, the Lakers take on the Mavs. They actually are the favorite in this game going to this matchup despite having so many injuries hitting this squad.

I will be live on the Lakers Nation.com YouTube channel breaking down the game as it happens.

Come hang out 4.30 p.m. Pacific time.

It's like a party.

It might be a bit more of a somber party than usual, but that's okay.

It's still like a party.

We'll be hanging out talking Lakers basketball and breaking down, which should be at least an interesting game because we've got a lot of moving parts here with the Lakers, a lot of things that are going to be changing. Today I'm going to get into the injury update, of course, for the Lakers, the Mavs as well. We'll talk a little bit about what needs to happen now. who's in the starting lineup for the Lakers with Luca out, Austin out, Marcus Smart.

We're going to get to that in just a minute.

Plus, what should the strategies be here now moving forward?

Make sure you do hit the subscribe button and we do appreciate prize picks for sponsoring this show.

Let's start here with the injury report for the Lakers.

As we know, Luca Donchich, Austin Reeves, both out. Marcus Smart, also out. This will be, I believe, six straight missed games for Marcus Smart. Unfortunately, that means your top three ball handlers that are not, that are not LeBron James effectively out of action for the Lakers tonight. That's going to be a very difficult hurdle to overcome.

But we'll get into how they can ultimately do that.

But Luca, Austin, we know they are out for the remainder of the regular season based on any

kind of a quick Google search on the injuries that they've got.

Luca, the hamstring strain, Austin Reeves, the oblique muscle strain, both grade two.

We're probably looking at least through the first round of the playoffs, if not longer,

most likely longer than that. But yeah, not great, obviously for the Lakers.

We're not going to see those guys anytime soon. Marcus Smart, still dealing with that ankle issue.

The Lakers have said in the past

that they want him to be 100% where they're going to put him back out there on the floor and

given the injuries that they've experienced already, yeah, that's probably still very much the case.

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