Doncic is heading to Europe to seek specialized medical treatment on his Grade 2 left hamstring strain in hopes of expediting his return to play, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Sunday.

The supertar guard has been out since suffering an injury against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday, and it was initially announced that he would miss the remainder of the regular season. His timeline to return was unclear and his status for the post-season was uncertain.

Grade 2 hamstring strains sometimes require several weeks of recovery, but Doncic also has prior experience with hamstring issues. He missed four games right before the All-Star break with another left hamstring strain, but returned to the lineup after the break.

Doncic is putting up spectacular numbers in his first full campaign with the Lakers, who acquired the Slovenian superstar from the Mavericks last season. He is averaging 33.5 points, 8.3 assists and 7.7 rebounds in 64 games for Los Angeles this season.

The decision to expedite his recovery process comes after the Lakers announced that fellow guard Austin Reaves would be out four to six weeks with an oblique injury, ruling him out for the remainder of the regular season into the playoffs.

Following Sunday’s loss to the Dallas Mavericks, the Lakers are 50-28 and are third in the Western Conference with four games to go.

— With files from the Associated Press

LeBron James had 30 points and 15 assists for the playoff-bound Lakers, who led for just 13 seconds in the opening minutes of their first game since injuries sidelined Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves for the rest of the regular season.

Doncic, the NBA scoring leader, has a left hamstring strain, and Reaves, LA’s No. 2 scorer, is out with a left oblique strain. Both were injured in a blowout loss at Oklahoma City on Thursday.

Flagg, who had nine assists and eight rebounds, recorded consecutive 40-point games for the first time two nights after the 19-year-old rookie No. 1 pick scored 51 to become the first NBA teenager with a 50-point outing. Flagg is the first rookie with back-to-back games scoring at least 40 points since Allen Iverson (1996-97 season).

Luke Kennard had his first career triple-double with 15 points, a career-high 16 rebounds and 11 assists for the Lakers, who dropped into a tie for third in the Western Conference with Denver, although LA holds the tiebreaker on the Nuggets. Houston has a chance to get into the third-place mix in the final week of the regular season.

P.J. Washington Jr. scored 13 of his 15 points after halftime for the Mavericks, whose home skid was their longest at 25-year-old American Airlines Center. They lost the first 19 games of the 1993-94 season at since-demolished Reunion Arena.

James scored 16 points in the second quarter, when the Lakers cut a 22-point deficit to six at halftime.

The 41-year-old in his record 23rd season had back-to-back dunks before the break, then a soaring alley-oop slam from Kennard to get the Lakers within 72-70 early in the third quarter. But LA never got closer.

Up next

Lakers: Host Oklahoma City on Tuesday.

Mavericks: Visit the Los Angeles Clippers on Tuesday.

The WNBA has set some key dates for free agency, with players and teams opening their negotiation periods next week, the league announced Sunday.

Qualifying offers and core designated players can be extended on Monday, free agent negotiation periods will begin on Wednesday, and players will officially be allowed to sign contracts and offers sheets on Saturday.

Teams will have two days to send qualifying offers to players for whom they have reserved rights. Teams will also have a chance to offer a franchise tag to one player who is eligible to be cored.

Due to drawn-out negotiations between the WNBA and its players’ union, with the two sides only officially ratifying a new CBA on March 24, off-season processes such as the expansion draft and free agency were delayed.

Last off-season, when the Golden State Valkyries joined the league, their expansion draft was held on Dec. 6 — a stark contrast to the Toronto Tempo and Portland Fire’s expansion draft, which occurred on Friday.

The expedited off-season processes have only added an extra layer of drama to what was projected to be a historic off-season, with more than 80 per cent of players in the league available in free agency.

That list of free agents includes some of the biggest stars in the game, such as two-time MVP Breanna Stewart, four-time MVP A’ja Wilson, four-time All-WNBA selection Sabrina Ionescu, and many more.

There are only two veteran players who aren’t under rookie contracts that are signed for this season — Seattle’s Lexie Brown and Phoenix’s Kalani Brown.

Usually teams have a few weeks to court free agents to join their franchise. There’s a chance that many players may just re-sign with their current teams for a year and revisit free agency after the season.

Players could also go after the money and accept a bigger contract from a team they might not know as much about.

Following free agency, the WNBA Draft is set to take place on April 13. Pre-season will begin on April 25, and the regular season will tip off on May 8.

— With fiels from the Associated Press

The Boston Celtics haven’t needed their five-time All-NBA wing to give the Toronto Raptors the business, mind you. Boston was 3-0 before Sunday afternoon’s game at TD Garden, with none of the results ever really in doubt. 

But Tatum’s return to All-NBA form after missing the first 62 games of the season recovering from a torn Achilles tendon suffered last May could very well be the finishing piece Boston needs to return to championship form.

It’s not even clear they needed him against Toronto on Sunday, as the Celtics dusted the Raptors in the fourth quarter to coast home with the 115-101 win. 

Tatum was merely a ‘nice-to-have’ when the best big man on the court was the Celtics’ Neemias Queta. A Portuguese centre who was a former second-round pick and spent three seasons on two-way deals before signing a team-friendly three-year deal for $7.2 million. He scored 18 points on 10 shots, mostly on a mixture of putbacks (thanks to five offensive rebounds) and unimpeded rolls to the rim. These things happen, but considering that Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković eventually had to adjust his rotation so that he could match up rookie Collin Murray-Boyles with Queta instead of Jakob Poeltl — who signed a three-year, $84 million extension last summer — you can kind of glean that the Raptors have bigger problems than how to match up with Tatum and Jaylen Brown. But that didn’t go all that well either. Throw in Payton Pritchard, back in his super-sixth man role with Tatum healthy again, and the trio combined for 66 points on 53 per cent shooting, with Tatum adding 13 rebounds and seven assists. 

The Raptors’ core three players? They weren’t nearly as good. Scottie Barnes, Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett combined to shoot 16-of-43 from the floor (37 per cent) while committing nine turnovers. Once again, the difference in the game was the fourth quarter — a theme all season. The Raptors were trailing by three going into the third, coughed up a couple of live-ball turnovers, lost track of Pritchard for a three and a lay-up, and the lead was back up to 12 in the blink of an eye. The Raptors had cut the lead to seven with 4:53 left on a pair of buckets by Brandon Ingram, but a Queta putback dunk, a Pritchard steal and a Derrick White three sparked a 15-4 run that sealed it for Boston. 

“I think we needed to come out with more urgency,” said Ja’Kobe Walter, who, together with Collin Murray-Boyles, were the Raptors’ bright spots. Walter finished with 16 points, was 4-of-5 from three and had two steals; one each on Tatum and Brown, who combined for 10 of Boston’s 18 turnovers. “They went on a quick run in that fourth; we just didn’t stop the bleeding. We have to figure out a way to punch back. Our identity is defence and we can’t have that many slip-ups early in that quarter.”

Some positives? 

Murray-Boyles finished with 12 points on 5-of-8 shooting. He added five assists, finding his teammates on cuts with some sharp passes out of the high post. It’s his fourth consecutive game in double figures scoring, a stretch in which he’s averaged 16.5 points per game on 65 per cent shooting.

The loss dropped the Raptors into seventh place in the East. They have the same 43-35 record as the sixth-place Philadelphia 76ers, but Philadelphia owns the tiebreaker because it has a better divisional record.  

That two of the Raptors’ best performers Sunday — and really of late — are Walter and Murray-Boyles might be the most encouraging thing about the Raptors as they unconvincingly plod their way to the post-season. 

Murray-Boyles, in particular, is a key figure for the Raptors now and in the future. If he can become a two-way difference maker, he represents Toronto’s quickest path to meaningful improvement this year and next. 

And consider the circumstances: 

Murray-Boyles isn’t coming back from the kind of injury Tatum has admirably and remarkably fought his way back from, but his rookie season has been a battle. 

He’s been dealing with two separate injuries to different parts of his left thumb — one when he caught his hand in the jersey of a Miami Heat player on Dec. 23 and the other when Lakers star Luka Doncic took a massive chop on his left hand on Jan. 18. 

The rookie tried to play through them, but would inevitably take some kind of blow on his thumb during the course of play and end up in obvious pain. The sight of Murray-Boyles waving his hand around like he’d caught his finger in a car door was a common sight. 

It got to the point where Murray-Boyles needed some extended time off, the most telling sign being that he wasn’t looking to score. In a 10-game stretch after Doncic’s karate chop, Murray-Boyles was averaging just 4.9 shots in 23 minutes per game and just two offensive rebounds. In the 11 games before Doncic hit him (and Murray-Boyles sat out four games), the Raptors rookie was putting up 8.1 shots per game and grabbing 3.9 offensive rebounds. 

He’s at least back to that level, if not better. And by the way, his thumb isn’t back to normal. 

“Not even close,” he said to me before the Celtics game. But it’s not bothering him enough that it’s affecting his offence. And he hasn’t looked like he’s caught in a door lately, so that’s encouraging too.

“I’m just really trying to do as much as I can, whenever I catch it, to be more aggressive because I know that helps the team,” said Murray-Boyles. “I know that helps get teammates open even if I’m not going to score. Just being aggressive makes teams respect me more.”

He showed it when he turned the corner in a pick-and-roll with Jamal Shead and rocked the backboard early in the second quarter. Or when he stood up Brown in the halfcourt and scored on a dunk in transition. 

There was a moment in the second quarter against Memphis on Friday when the Raptors had fallen behind — which felt a little bit concerning given the Raptors were coming off a disappointing loss to Sacramento, another tanking team, in their previous start — when Brandon Ingram was waiting to check into the game with Murray-Boyles. The 10-year veteran looked at the rookie and bumped fists and trusted the rookie with a simple message.

“He just told me play as hard as I can and let’s blow this game out of the water,” said Murray-Boyles.

On his first touch, he finished another pick-and-roll with a dunk. His athletic burst stands out on a Raptors team that can be lacking in that area. 

He’s got plenty of room for improvement: his perimeter shooting is a work in progress, and even around the rim, he’s very left-hand dominant, which the league will catch up to sooner than later, especially if the Raptors do end up in a playoff series. For now, it’s not something he’s worried about. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. I’ll just be aggressive. That’s all that really matters. I’m strong and I’ll just use my size to my advantage.”

His teammates are picking up on his confidence.

“He’s moving the needle for us,” Ingram, who finished with 15 points on 6-of-13 shooting against Boston, said. “Defensively and offensively.  That’s very rare for a rookie. A lot of rookies, they want to show their stuff, but he’s found his niche, he slides in the right spot, he’s available at the right time and he sees the game.”

Whether the Raptors make the playoffs or survive the play-in is an open question. It’s hard to be optimistic after matchups against teams like Boston, who have won four games against the Raptors by an average of 12 points. The Raptors are now just 5-17 against the top eight teams in the NBA. 

But a performance like Walter had against Boston or the way Murray-Boyles has played of late, there’s at least room for optimism. 

Three-point Grange

Hey, wait … that’s Aaliyah Edwards: You never know who you will run into. I was taking the elevator up to floor level at TD North Garden, and there was Edwards, the Canadian women’s national team star and Connecticut Sun forward. She was in Boston as part of an all-female broadcast on NBC Sports Boston, doing pre-and-post-game analysis. “It’s something I’ve been interested in,” said Edwards, who is poised to start her third WNBA season and second with the Sun. “I majored in communications at UConn, so it’s definitely something I want to do in the future. Obviously, my priority is basketball in my season and my passion, but off-season, this is my chance to explore and tap into different things that I like.” 

Slowly for Quickley: “I missed basketball.” That’s how Immanuel Quickley described how he was feeling as he sat in the Raptors locker room before the Celtics game, his troublesome right foot encased in a bucket of ice. He’s at least able to see some basketball in his future. He’s out of the light walking boot he was wearing to protect the case of plantar fasciitis that popped up recently and has kept him out of the lineup for eight games and counting. The Raptors’ point guard has gone through on-court workouts for three straight days now, without a setback. The official word is he’s ‘ramping up’ his basketball activity, with no return date set. 

And now there are four: Back when the Raptors had 10 games left on their schedule, I broke them down this way: They had three games against elite teams they have struggled to compete with all season; three games against the ‘tanking class’ the Raptors have mostly done well against, and four against the middle class — their peer group, basically. I suggested that if the Raptors could finish 6-4, with three wins against the tankers and three-out-four against the middle class (presuming they go 0-3 against the elite), it would be enough to finish with 46 wins and grab sixth place.

So far? They went winless against Detroit and Boston but went 2-0 against New Orleans and Orlando. They dropped the game against Sacramento but easily handled Memphis to go 1-1 against the tankers. With four games left, they can likely control their destiny if they can sweep Miami, which they host for two games in Toronto this week. They then go on the road against the third-seeded Knicks next Friday before finishing at home on Sunday against the woeful Nets. Meaningful basketball. 

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