BOSTON — LeBron James drove against Jaylen Brown, spinning and pivoting and head-faking until he made a left-handed floating hook shot. The basket cut the Los Angeles Lakers’ deficit, which was 20 points to begin the fourth quarter, to seven points, 92-85, with 7:05 left in the game.
After a brutal third quarter, in which they were outscored 29-13, the Lakers were making a spirited charge. They had the momentum shifting in their favor. Or so it seemed.
As James gathered himself to run back on defense, he started moving gingerly. On the next defensive possession, James, dealing with discomfort, moved out of the way on a Brown drive as the Boston Celtics star laid the ball in uncontested. James immediately raised his hand, signaling to the Lakers’ coaching staff that he wanted out of the game.
The Lakers called timeout with 6:44 remaining. As he walked to the sideline, James told coach JJ Redick, “It’s my groin.” At that point, Redick later shared, he mentally ruled out James for the rest of the game and began thinking of how the Lakers could win without their 40-year-old superstar.
During the timeout, James tried to squat and stretch out his groin with longtime trainer Mike Mancias, but he winced in pain and ultimately sauntered to the locker room. James was shortly ruled out with a left groin strain.
“I maybe extended it a little too much,” James said afterward.
The Lakers rallied to get within four points twice, but the Celtics’ stellar shotmaking from Jayson Tatum and Brown was too much to overcome. Boston snapped the Lakers’ eight-game win streak, winning 111-101 at TD Garden to drop Los Angeles to 40-22 and No. 3 in the West.
Lakers’ LeBron James to miss 1-2 weeks with strained groin: Sources
The biggest topic after the game was James’ groin strain — and how long he could be out. James downplayed the initial fears with his injury, and Sunday, team sources confirmed he is expected to miss 1-2 weeks.
James said his mind immediately went to Christmas Day 2018 against the Golden State Warriors in Oakland, Calif., when he suffered a torn groin that caused him to miss the next 17 games in his first season with the Lakers.
But James made it clear that this injury isn’t as serious.
“No, it’s not as bad as that,” James said. “It’s not as bad as that.”
James then turned around at his locker and knocked on the wood near his name tag to try to not jinx himself.
“Obviously, to get injured at this time, those (groin) injuries are — I don’t want to say the worst, but they are tough to deal with,” Luka Dončić said. “So, just take his time. And we got to have as a team a next-man-up mentality.”
To compound matters, Redick said pregame that Rui Hachimura will miss at least another week with a knee injury. Jaxson Hayes also remains out with a knee contusion. Add in James and the Lakers’ entire starting frontcourt is out.
This would be one of the worst portions of the regular season for James to potentially miss, with the Lakers playing the No. 2 Denver Nuggets twice over the next 10 days. The Lakers finish their road trip in Brooklyn on Monday, and then in Milwaukee on Thursday and Denver on Friday. That back-to-back kicks off an eight-day stretch in which they play three consecutive back-to-backs: at Milwaukee/at Denver, vs. Phoenix/vs. San Antonio, and vs. Denver/vs. Milwaukee.
As things stand, the Lakers are a half-game back in the win column behind the No. 2 Nuggets (41-22), two games up in the loss column on the No. 4 Memphis Grizzlies (39-24), three in the loss column on the No. 5 Houston Rockets (39-25) and six in the loss column of the No. 6 Warriors (36-28).
How can the Lakers potentially survive without James?
“I think we just have to continue to play hard and play defense,” Redick said.
Redick is not wrong. The Lakers, the league’s best defense since Jan. 15, will have to rely more on that end of the floor to muck up games and generate transition offense.
There is no one-for-one James replacement. He’s appeared in 58 of the Lakers’ 62 games and been their throughline during this 20-5 stretch that has included portions without Anthony Davis or Dončić. James just won Player of the Month for February and has been playing at a backend-of-the-ballot MVP level and first-team All-NBA level. For the season, he’s averaging 25.1 points on 51.8 percent shooting (39.1 percent from 3) to go along with 8.5 assists and 8.1 rebounds.
With Dončić on the floor and James off the floor, the Lakers have outscored opponents by 21.6 points per 100 possessions, per Cleaning the Glass. In those lineups, the Lakers are averaging 122.9 points per 100 possessions (92nd percentile offensively) and allowing just 101.4 points per 100 possessions defensively (99th percentile defensively). It’s a small sample size — only 216 possessions — but it at least offers some encouragement that the Lakers can figure out a way to continue winning without James.
Of note, when removing Hachimura from those lineups — because he’ll miss at least several more games — those Dončić-led lineups drop to plus-11.0 points per possessions (on 146 possessions). Remove Hayes and the lineups improve to plus-17.1 points per 100 possessions (117 possessions).
“We’ve had many situations where a player deals with some type of injury or a trade or whatever it is, and we’ve done a really good job of bouncing back,” Austin Reaves said. “And I don’t expect anything else. It’s a next-man-up mentality. Not one person’s gonna do what LeBron does for us. But you can do it as a collective. And … hopefully, he gets back out on the court soon.”
James will continue traveling with the team on its four-game trip, though he noted, “We’ll see what happens in the next few days and then go from there.”
With or without James, the Lakers’ objective is clear: Continue winning as many games as possible and try to enter the playoffs as healthy as they can.
“We can compete versus anyone in this league,” James said. “So, we’ll be fine. We got to continue to build our habits. … We made an acquisition late in the season, and we’re still trying to build. And we want to get full. That’s the No. 1 objective for us: How we can get full and get all our guys together and see exactly what we look like.”
Required reading
(Photo: Elsa / Getty Images)
