The Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis got hit in the eye on a drive to the basket at the end of the first quarter of Saturday night’s game against the Golden State Warriors.
After going back to the locker room, Davis did not come back out to the court for the rest of the first half. He also did not emerge at the start of the third quarter before the Lakers eventually ruled him out for the rest of the night with an eye contusion.
This is a massive loss for the Lakers in arguably their most important game of the season. Davis has typically dominated against the Warriors due to the lack of size, and that was again the case in this one as he had eight points, four rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block in 12 minutes of action.
The Lakers’ only other healthy center on the roster is Jaxson Hayes, meaning they will need to go small some if Davis is forced to miss time. Two-way big man Harry Giles III could also potentially see some action.
What makes this injury so unfortunate for Davis is that he has stayed relatively healthy all year, putting together one of his best all-around seasons.
Additionally, with only a handful of games to play in the regular season, the Lakers could really use a win over the Warriors. who they came into the night one game ahead of in the standings for ninth place in the West.
Darvin Ham discusses importance of Lakers’ game against Warriors
At this stage of the season everyone knows how important every game is for the Lakers, but head coach Darvin Ham spoke on just how crucial this one against the Warriors is.
“Extremely important,” Ham said after practice on Friday. “I thought today was a great day, energy was high. We went through the Sacramento film and just some other things that we can work on, mixed in how we’ve been playing here as of late, some clips from Minnesota or whatever. But for the most part, it was looking at how we can slow down the generation of 3s that are being piled on us. So we looked at that, looked at the rebounding, looked at how we played different schemes on the ball and looked at our offense. We looked at the stretch of the third quarter last game in Sac and looked at the possessions where we were really giving ourselves and advantage with our pace, our screens.
“I thought it was good, a lot of dialogue with a few different guys. I think that’s been great, that’s why we’ve been able to respond after some of these disappointing losses. We look it right dead in the face in the mirror in front of ourselves, coaches and players, and see how we can get better. But definitely one we got onto the floor, we touched on Golden State. We’ll do it again tomorrow so we feel solid about the way we play them, just some little different switch ups here and there that I won’t reveal right now. But we feel good about our chances, for sure.”
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