Lakers star Luka Dončić to miss remainder of regular season with hamstring strain, will challenge NBA's 65-game minimum for awards eligibility

The Los Angeles Lakers suffered both insult and injury Thursday night against the Oklahoma City Thunder. During the team’s blowout loss , star guard Luka Dončić was forced to leave the game due to a left hamstring injury. Dončić underwent an MRI on Friday and was diagnosed with a Grade 2 hamstring strain, resulting in the Lakers ruling him out indefinitely according to ESPN’s Shams Charania and Dave McMenamin .

At the very least, he will miss the remainder of the regular season. His status once the playoffs begin is reportedly uncertain. According to one expert, Jeff Stotts of In Street Clothes , Grade 2 hamstring strains lead to an average time lost of 35 days.

That would line up Dončić for a May 8 return, which would land him in the conference semifinals phase of the playoffs. With Dončić out, the Lakers took a significant blow to their title odds, going from 25-to-1 to 60-to-1 at BetMGM. They were also previously 14-to-1 to win the Western Conference and are now 30-to-1.

Luka Dončić appears poised to miss part of the NBA playoffs too. Cooper Neill via Getty Images The development not only costs the Lakers their leading scorer for the foreseeable future, it also leaves Dončić one game short of the NBA’s 65-game minimum for regular season awards eligibility. In a statement released shortly after the news broke , Dončić’s agent Bill Duffy said his camp intends to challenge that rule on the grounds that Dončić missed two games in December for the birth of his daughter: "This season, Luka Dončić has performed at a historic level, leading the league in scoring, carrying the Lakers to third place in the Western Conference and placing himself in the middle of one of the most tightly contested MVP races in memory.