DALLAS — Lakers star Luka Doncic will seek special medical treatment in Europe for his left hamstring strain with the hopes he’ll be able to return to the court quicker, his agency shared on Sunday night.

Bill Duffy of WME Basketball, who’s Doncic’s agent, first told ESPN the news after the Lakers’ 134-128 loss to the Mavericks, which was the Lakers’ first game since Doncic and fellow star guard Austin Reaves suffered their regular season-ending injuries during the team’s blowout loss to the Thunder on Thursday. 

Doncic suffered the hamstring injury during the third quarter of the loss, with an MRI on Friday revealing a Grade 2 strain,  which typically comes with a recovery timeline of 3-6 weeks. 

InStreetClothes, which is an NBA injury database run by certified athletic trainer Jeff Stotts, stated that the average time lost for the type of injury Doncic suffered is about 35 days. 

The Lakers didn’t provide a timeline for Doncic’s expected return to the court. 

Three weeks from when Doncic suffered the hamstring injury was April 23, which would be around Games 3 or 4 of the Lakers’ first-round playoff matchup.

A timeline closer to 35 days, let alone six weeks, would likely take Doncic out of the Lakers’ entire first-round playoff series, even if it lasted seven games.

“I just know that he’s gonna do everything he can to try to be back,” coach JJ Redick said. “I talked to him Friday, I talked to him again [on Saturday], I talked to him again [Sunday] morning. He’s going to go through all the necessary things to be back at some point, and it’s our job again to extend the season so both those guys can get back.”

Redick said internal medical data didn’t show any signs of overuse for Doncic or Reaves, who’s sidelined with a Grade 2 left oblique strain, before their injuries. 

Both grabbed at their respective injured areas during the first quarter of Thursday’s game but played through the third quarter before Doncic left the matchup with his hamstring injury and Reaves was subbed out. 

“As a coach, you go on the information you have,” Redick said.

“[Reaves] was medically cleared. When Austin came back, I asked directly, I thought he was hurt. [I was told], ‘No, he’s medically cleared.’ The group wanted to go for it in the second half. Talked about it at halftime. And I think for both those guys, the nature of playing heavy minutes, that’s certainly a part of any equation when you’re trying to manage workloads.

“We also rely on the tracking data, and we’re looking at that after every game. And there have been a few times this year where it’s gone away from the standard deviation of whatever their baseline is, and we make the proper adjustments. There was nothing leading into that game that would suggest either those guys were ‘running hot’ as we call it.”

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U.S. Vice President JD Vance will visit Hungary next week, where he will meet with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán days ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections.

The vice president and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, will visit Budapest from April 7 to 8, according to a release from his office circulating on social media.

The release states that Vance “will also deliver remarks on the rich partnership between the United States and Hungary.”

VANCE ANTI-FRAUD TASK FORCE SUSPENDS 221 CALIFORNIA HOSPICE AND HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS SO FAR

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (C) speaks as U.S. Vice President JD Vance (L) and President Donald Trump (R) look on during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 7, 2025. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

“Vice President @JDVance will visit Hungary next Tuesday. Looking forward to welcoming you to Budapest!” Orbán declared in a post on X.

U.S. President Donald Trump has enthusiastically endorsed the foreign leader.

TRUMP ALLY ORBAN ISSUES SCATHING LETTER DEMANDING ZELENSKYY CHANGE UKRAINE’S ‘ANTI-HUNGARIAN POLICY’

U.S. President Donald Trump (L) greets Prime Minister of Hungary Victor Orban as he arrives at the White House on Nov. 7, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Roberto Schmidt/Getty Images)

“I was proud to ENDORSE Viktor for Re-Election in 2022, and am honored to do so again. Election Day is April 12, 2026. Hungary: GET OUT AND VOTE FOR VIKTOR ORBÁN. He is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Hungary — VIKTOR ORBÁN WILL NEVER LET THE GREAT PEOPLE OF HUNGARY DOWN. I AM WITH HIM ALL THE WAY!” Trump declared in part of a Truth Social post last month.

RUBIO SEALS CIVIL NUCLEAR COOPERATION AGREEMENT WITH HUNGARY

Viktor Orban arrives for an EU Summit at the EU headquarters in Brussels, on March 19, 2026. (Magali Cohen / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images)

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Trump had previously backed Orbán in February Truth Social posts as well.

Fox News Digital reached out to Vance’s office on Friday.

With friends like these: One real virtue of the Iran war is how it exposes once-hidden disloyalties.

That goes for the various cranks on the right we considered the other day, most prominently podcaster Tucker Carlson, formally “evicted” from MAGA by President Donald Trump and sadly now claiming the CIA is out to frame him.

Other big-ish righty names — Steve Bannon, Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene — are also denouncing Operation Epic Fury, marginally undermining a mission that has strong support among GOP voters and even more so among MAGA ones.

They’re not so much dividing the right, in other words, as declaring themselves unbalanced (or perhaps overly reliant on a fringe audience for their clicks).

A far bigger deal are the US “allies” declining Trump’s call for help, even if just symbolic, to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Even though little oil or natural gas flows through there to America, both are vital to the global markets Europeans and others now scrambling for rocks to hide beneath depend on.

“This is not our war, we have not started it,” squirms German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.   

“It’s never been envisioned to be a NATO mission,” flutters UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Trump’s not asking for help in the war; he’s suggesting that countries that benefit from oil and gas that goes through the Strait should help get it flowing again.

Much as many of these same nations did join in NATO’s Operation Ocean Shield and the European Union’s Operation Atalanta to counter Somali piracy a decade or two back — with the navies of India and China playing an important role, too.

Then again, most of our European “allies” have let their navies shrink to almost nothing since then, with Starmer’s Britain especially pathetic.

Such cowardice now is a reminder of just how impotent these countries have become.

As Trump fumed on Truth Social, it seems NATO has become “a one way street – We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us.”

Or even for themselves — since they’re at risk now thanks to their climate-cult foolishness: Shunning fossil-fuel extraction and even shutting nuclear plants left them utterly at the mercy of the flow of foreign gas and oil.

More, their governments (especially left-wing ones) are ever more captive to increasingly powerful Muslim voting blocs after enormous waves of immigration and failed attempts at societal integration. 

Sending even a few ships would matter, letting Iran know its gambit is failing to divide the West.

Trump says he asked for help from some countries “not because we need them” but to show he was right in predicting that “if we ever did need them, they won’t be there.”

It all brings to mind Winston Churchill’s remark after Britain and France joined Israel to recapture another key waterway, the Suez Canal, from Egypt in 1956 — only to be slapped down by Washington: “I would never have dared,” but “if I had dared, I would certainly never have dared stop.”

Trump’s bid to completely defang the Islamic Republic (which had managed to accumulate enough enriched uranium for 11 nuclear bombs) was long overdue.

Western leaders don’t have to endorse his actions, but now that he has acted, they owe it to America to stand by him — and step up.

This is a global problem, if ever there was one. It needs a global response.

The Swedish military has intercepted a suspected Russian drone off the south of the country as a French aircraft carrier was docked in the port of Malmö, officials say.

The armed forces said on Thursday that a Swedish naval ship observed the suspected drone during a patrol in the Öresund, the strait that divides Sweden from Denmark.

They said that unspecified countermeasures were taken to disrupt the drone, and that contact with the drone was then lost.

The French nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle is in the southern Swedish city of Malmö this week as part of regular NATO exercise activities. Malmö is located on the Öresund, opposite the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

French military spokesperson Guillaume Vernet told The Associated Press that the drone was detected on Wednesday and handled by Swedish forces integrated into a security system around the carrier.

He said Friday that the drone was more than 6 miles from the Charles de Gaulle.

“This system showed it is robust, and this event had no impact on the activity of the aircraft carrier battle group,” Vernet said.

Swedish Defense Minister Pål Jonson told public broadcaster SVT Thursday evening that the suspected violation of Swedish airspace by a drone happened in connection with a Russian military ship being in Swedish territorial waters.

Asked what country he thinks the drone belongs to, he replied: “Probably Russia.”

The Russian ship continued into the Baltic Sea, and Swedish authorities have been in close contact with Denmark about the incident, Jonson said. The armed forces said no further drones were observed.

Western officials say Russia is masterminding a campaign of sabotage and disruption across Europe. An Associated Press database has documented well over 100 incidents.

Not all incidents are public and it can sometimes take officials months to establish a link to Moscow. While officials say the campaign — waged since President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — aims to deprive Kyiv of support, they believe Moscow is also trying to identify Europe’s weak spots and suck up law enforcement resources.