Lakers’ Anthony Davis Exits Game With Lower Back Injury After Hard Fall

Lakers‘ power forward Anthony Davis had to leave the game after a hard fall in Tuesday’s 117-87 victory over the Knicks. Davis attempted to block Knicks’ forward Julius Randle‘s shot, but was bumped in midair and fell hard on his back exiting the game in the third quarter.

Davis slammed the floor with his fist and seemed to be in excruciating pain. It took a couple minutes before he was able to get off the court after being attended to by Lakers’ medical staff. His teammates helped lift the all-star up and he was ultimately able to leave the court without assistance. Davis walked around in the tunnel to feel things out, but eventually was carted out of the Staples Center to receive medical testing.

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Rich Paul, Davis’ agent, said the X-Ray came back negative, but the Chicago native is still feeling sore, according to ESPN. According to The Athletic, Davis had an MRI Tuesday and those results were also negative. He will join the team on their road trip as they face Dallas on Friday, a source told ESPN’s Cari Champion on Wednesday.

The Lakers were leading by 19 with less than three minutes left in the third quarter when Davis went down. They went on to blow out the Knicks by 30 points extending their win streak to six games. They now have a 4.5 game lead over the second seeded Nuggets.

LeBron James, who finished with 31 points, five rebounds and five assists, told the media, “Who said it would be easy? In the NBA, guys get injured. Guys get sick. Obviously we know what AD’s meant for this team. Obviously there’s no replacing him. You can’t say you replace what he does, he does everything. But everybody else has got to chip in and be better. We’ll see what happens with his injury and take it from there.”