Lakers star Anthony Davis leaves loss to Timberwolves early with eye injury after taking shot to face

Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis left their 127-117 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves early on Sunday night after he aggravated an eye injury.

Davis took an inadvertent shot to the face from Timberwolves forward Kyle Anderson late in the first quarter of the game at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Davis picked up a rebound and was going for a put-back dunk when Anderson made contact with his eye. While Davis completed the dunk, he hit the floor hard after and was clearly in pain.

Davis left the game due to the injury, and the team then ruled him out in the second half with a left eye injury. He finished with four points and four rebounds in 12 minutes.

The hit to his eye aggravated a corneal abrasion he first sustained in a loss to the Golden State Warriors last month after Trayce Jackson-Davis hit him in the eye. Davis left the game early that night, too, and he saw a specialist after his vision was impaired and his eyelid was swollen shut.

“I just couldn’t see,” Davis said last month, via ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “The corneal abrasion was actually right in the middle of my eye. It wasn’t like off to the side. So anytime I looked it was blurry. My eye was swollen. I thought my eye was like, [torn] open. But it wasn’t. It kept watering. It just felt like sand was in my eye.”

While it’s unclear how severe the injury is, there is “optimism” that Davis will be able to return for the Lakers’ next game on Tuesday night, according to McMenamin.

Without Davis and LeBron James — who was ruled out with flu-like symptoms — the Timberwolves rolled past the Lakers on Sunday night. They outscored the Lakers by 19 points in the second quarter and held on to grab the 10-point win behind 31 points from Naz Reid and 26 points from Anthony Edwards. The Timberwolves improved to 54-24 with the win, which has them in first in the Western Conference standings.

Rui Hachimura led the Lakers with 30 points in the loss. Jaxson Hayes added 19 points and 10 rebounds off the bench, and Spencer Dinwiddie finished with 18 points. The Lakers fell to 45-34 after the loss. They now sit ninth in the Western Conference standings with just three games left in the regular season.