Luka Doncic’s health has been the subject of great attention over the past few seasons and, particularly, this season following his trade to the Los Angeles Lakers.

While much has been debated about his habits and work ethic, fans have begun to notice the frequency at which Doncic’s knees bleed through his tights during games. The ‘mystery’ continued in the Lakers’ Game 2 win vs. the Minnesota Timberwolves, which prompted Dr. Brian Sutterer, a popular sports medicine content creator, to look into the issue.

Although Sutterer obviously does not have access to Doncic’s medical records, he said that it seems unlikely that the blood on Doncic’s knee would be caused by injections or draining, a common theory among fans. Sutterer said that even though the spot on which the blood often appears is consistent with where injections would occur, the amount and consistency of blood would seemingly rule it out as being because of Doncic receiving injections or having his knee drained.

Instead, Sutterer hypothesized that Doncic’s knee blood is a result of repeated trauma to his tibial plateau.

“We call this the tibial plateau, and there’s really no muscles around this area, there’s no significant padding around this area It’s very exposed to shear injuries from trauma,” Sutterer said. “And yes, the way Luka plays, I think he is just prone to a playing style that causes this area to get repetiviely cut, torn, injured and then develop the bleeding because they’re not going to take him back in the locker room in the middle of the game and try and pull him out to do any cleaning this up.”

Doncic did suffer from injuries throughout last postseason and most of this season, but it has done little to slow him down so far in the postseason this year. In the first two games of the Lakers’ first-round series against the Timberwolves, Doncic is averaging 34 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists per game.

The Lakers will need much more of that from Doncic as the series shifts to Minneapolis and the Timberwolves attempt to take back control after losing Game 2.

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