LOS ANGELES (AP) — NBA scoring leader Luka Doncic will have an MRI exam on Friday after he left the Los Angeles Lakers' game against Philadelphia with a left leg injury.
Doncic limped to the locker room with 3:03 left in the first half Thursday night after apparently feeling pain in his hamstring on the far end of the court moments earlier. He didn't return to the court when the second half began, and the Lakers announced Doncic was done for the night due to left leg soreness.
“He didn't feel like it was good enough to go back in (to the game),” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “Neither did (the) medical (staff), so we held him out. He'll get some imaging. Too early to (diagnose) the injury. Just a sore hamstring.”
Doncic began the night leading the NBA with 33.4 points per game in his first full season with the Lakers despite missing eight games with different leg injuries. The Slovenian superstar is second in the league with 8.7 assists and he has also grabbed 7.9 rebounds per game.
He had 10 points, four rebounds and five turnovers during the Lakers' rough first half against the Sixers, missing all four of his 3-point attempts. After falling behind by 16 early in the second half, Los Angeles impressively rallied for a 119-115 victory led by Austin Reaves, who scored 35 points in just 25 minutes during his second game back from a 19-game absence with a calf injury.
“I talked to (Doncic) a little bit at halftime, asked if he was OK, and he kind of just looked at me,” Reaves said. “Hopefully it’s nothing major. We need him. He’s our best player and the engine of a lot of stuff that we do. Hopefully it’ll be good news tomorrow.”
Doncic left the arena with a slight limp in his step.
The Lakers could be forgiven for feeling frustration after yet another injury to one of their three stars.
Doncic, Reaves and LeBron James were all playing together for only the 10th time in Los Angeles' 50 games this season before Doncic got hurt against the Sixers. The Lakers are still in the thick of the Western Conference playoff race at 31-19 despite not knowing what they could look like at full strength for a prolonged period.
James missed the first 14 games of the season with sciatica, and Reaves only returned last Tuesday night in the Lakers' win at Brooklyn to close their eight-game road trip.
Reaves appears to be back in top form already after his scoring barrage while playing on a minutes restriction. He went 12 of 17 from the field and hit five 3-pointers along with six rebounds.
“When you get hurt, obviously there's a period where you don't do much, and then for the last two or three weeks, I've been grinding,” Reaves said. “I've played many stay-ready games. ... The amount of time I actually played, I felt like I got a good jump from that. You don't expect to be ready right off the bat, but I feel like we did a good job of trying to keep my rhythm.”
Doncic was the NBA's Western Conference player of the month for January after averaging 34.0 points on 50.6% shooting with 7.2 rebounds, 9.1 assists and 1.5 steals in a dominant stretch of play.
He was also selected for his sixth All-Star game, voted in as a starter for the annual event at Intuit Dome in nearby Inglewood, California, next weekend.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic, left shoots as Philadelphia 76ers guard Kelly Oubre Jr. defends during the first half of an NBA basketball game Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
Philadelphia 76ers forward Dominick Barlow, left, and Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic reach for a rebound during the first half of an NBA basketball game Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill)
ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.
The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.
“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.
Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.
But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.
“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” on the possibility of a special session.
Kemp spokesperson Carter Chapman said he Republican governor will examine the situation.
“We’ll analyze all bills, as well as the consequence of those that did not pass,” Chapman said Friday.
House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.
“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”
A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.
“This is uncharted territory,” he said.
Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”
Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.
Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.
Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.
“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.
Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.
“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.
Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.
Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.
Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.
“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”
FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
