Inside Luka Doncic’s high-stakes medical treatment and recovery plan https://t.co/dLEOLNzJ3k— LakerTom (@LakerTom) April 7, 2026
Inside Doncic’s high-stakes medical treatment and recovery plan
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April 7, 2026 1 Comment
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Now Doncic and Austin Reaves are both sidelined at least for the rest of the regular season and likely through the first round of the playoffs. The injury updates that came on consecutive days following Thursday’s 43-point loss to Oklahoma City felt like a devastating series of gut punches. Coach JJ Redick often talks about “not letting go of the rope.” The Lakers will have to white-knuckle their way through the next few weeks without their two stars.
Why is Luka Doncic in Europe?
Lakers star Luka Doncic reacts after sustaining a hamstring injury against the Oklahoma City Thunder on April 2.
Lakers star Luka Doncic reacts after sustaining a hamstring injury against the Oklahoma City Thunder on April 2. (Cooper Neill / Getty Images)
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He knows magic. Now Luka Doncic needs medicine to help pull off his next stunning trick.
With the playoffs approaching, Doncic traveled to Europe to seek treatment for his strained left hamstring, his agent, Bill Duffy, confirmed to The Times’ Broderick Turner. The hope is that with specialized treatments, Doncic can speed up what is typically a four- to six-week recovery process and get back in time for at least part of the Lakers postseason, which begins April 18.
Ultrasound-guided platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections and stem cell injections are the most common treatments for injuries of this nature, said Kenton Fibel, a primary care sports medicine specialist at Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedics.
The biologic injections can speed up healing of injured tissue. PRP injections use the natural growth and anti-inflammatory factors in platelets to promote healing while stem cells harvested from a patient’s bone marrow or adipose tissue similarly help with the regeneration and turnover of the healing tissue into normal muscle tendon tissue, Fibel said.
Top U.S. athletes have gone to Europe to seek the treatments for decades. Kobe Bryant, former Colts quarterback Andrew Luck and San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey are among those who’ve crossed the pond for solutions to chronic injuries. But similar treatments are also available in the United States.
In the U.S., only PRP and stem cell injections coming from a patient’s own body are allowed and the cells are not allowed to be manipulated, Fibel said. With looser regulations in Europe, doctors can attempt to increase the concentration of anti-inflammatory factors in a single PRP sample or culture stem cells over days to increase the number of them with hopes of speeding up healing even more.
Whether there is a significant increase in efficacy between the cutting-edge European treatments compared to the U.S. methods is unclear, Fibel said, but an athlete’s decision to pursue treatment often comes down to individual comfort level or prior experiences.
The ubiquity of degenerative conditions or recurring soft tissue injuries in sports have turned European countries, including Germany and Switzerland, into hot spots for top athletes searching for help.
“These are injuries that are not always that easy to completely prevent, and it’s also not the easiest to always prevent reaggravation,” Fibel said. “And so I think [the new treatments] also comes from a frustration of doing a lot of the treatments and modalities that were used in prior injuries and still having an issue afterwards [so] that they’re searching for something new and different.”
Doncic knows the routine when it comes to hamstring injuries. As a player who thrives on his shifty change of pace, Doncic’s quick start and stop motions put extra load on his hamstrings and put him at risk of reinjury. Another left hamstring strain sidelined him for four games earlier this season.
Now with a Grade 2 injury, Doncic’s timeline for recovery would typically be four to six weeks. A Grade 2 injury shows “true disruption” that involves about 50% of the tissue, Fibel said. The most severe Grade 3 is used to describe a more significant, if not complete, tear of the muscle or tendon. The Lakers have suffered several Grade 2 injuries this season, including Austin Reaves’ latest left oblique strain.
The timing of the injuries couldn’t be worse for the Lakers. Not only do the playoffs begin in less than two weeks, but the Lakers were playing their best basketball of the season before the injuries to Doncic and Reaves. They appeared to be legitimate contenders in the playoffs. Now they must wait to see if Doncic’s super serum turns him into a superhero capable of saving their postseason.
“[Doncic is] going to go through all the necessary things to be back at some point,” Redick said, “and it’s our job again to extend the season so both those guys can get back.”