Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis left the Christmas Day game against the Golden State Warriors in the middle of the first quarter after suffering a left ankle sprain and was eventually ruled out for the rest of the game. The Lakers first said he was questionable at halftime but he did not come out with his team for the third quarter and was later deemed unable to return.

Davis finished the game with 0 points on 0-for-3 shooting, two rebounds and one steal in seven minutes.

It’s an unfortunate loss for the Lakers, who are already very thin in the frontcourt with Jaxson Hayes, Christian Wood and Jarred Vanderbilt all out with their own injuries.

In Davis’ absence, the Lakers will turn to Christian Koloko at center while LeBron James and Rui Hachimura will also see time there considering the team has no other healthy big men.

Given the Warriors’ lack of size, not having Davis for the rest of the game is not ideal. He has typically dominating against Golden State in recent years.

It remains to be seen how serious the injury is for Davis and if he will be forced to miss any time, but it will be something worth monitoring moving forward. Davis has played through minor ailments in the past so will surely do whatever he can to be back on the floor as soon as possible.

Anthony Davis: Teams will exploit Lakers’ lack of physicality

During a recent loss in which the Lakers were bullied by the Detroit Pistons, Anthony Davis talked about the need to be more physical and clean up their turnovers as teams will look to exploit it moving forward.

“Be strong with the ball. Teams are going to watch film and look at this game. The gameplan coming into the game is to be physical, and we will not turn the ball over, so we just got to be physical with the basketball. We have to set guys up and not play so loosely, and how we counteract that is to be physical back.”