Lakers star LeBron James sat out of his third consecutive game on Tuesday night when the Lakers hosted the Timberwolves at Crypto.com Arena, with the team ruling him out two hours before tipoff because of a right hip contusion and left foot arthritis.
The team originally listed James on the injury report for the Friday win over the Pacers and Sunday win over the Knicks because of the left foot ailment he’s continued to deal with and left elbow contusion he suffered in Thursday’s road loss to the Nuggets.
The team first listed James on the injury report because of the hip ailment on Monday evening, with coach JJ Redick saying ahead of the matchup against the Timberwolves that he suffered the injury against the Nuggets and started feeling it on Friday.
“He did his on-court shooting before our film and walkthrough [on Tuesday], and probably just needs a couple more days,” Redick said of James. “So, still day-to-day. Sometimes day-to-day means two days. Sometimes it can mean…five or six days. But he’s day-to-day.”
Sunday was the first time James missed consecutive games since making his season debut in mid-November after sitting out of the first 14 games of sciatica.
He’s averaging 21.4 points (50.4% shooting), seven assists, 5.6 rebounds and 1.1 steals in the 44 games he’s played this season.
The 41-year-old James hasn’t spoken with reporters since after the loss to the Nuggets. He was present for the Lakers’ film session on Monday.
James had played in 44 of 48 after making his season debut before sitting out of the last three games.
“We obviously want him in the lineup,” Redick said. “When we were kind of approaching this stretch and you see the six days in eight nights and two back-to-backs last week, you never know how his body is gonna respond to a game and how his foot’s gonna respond. So it’s not to say I expected him to miss a game. It’s just, it wouldn’t have surprised me if he needed a day or two to get his body right. The fact that he had the falls in Denver, he’s trying to ramp up. He wants to be out there and so do we and hopefully he’s back soon.”
The Lakers entered Tuesday with a 13-7 record in the games James didn’t play this season, including 9-2 in games Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves have played without James.
“When all three of those guys are on the court specifically there’s, again, it goes back to the human element – it’s what they’re comfortable doing as basketball players,” Redick said. “Which for all three of those guys, for one of those guys [in James] having scored the most points in NBA history and doing it for 23 years is to have the ball in his hands. For another guy [in Doncic] who’s had five first team All-NBAs and should make another first team All-NBA this year, it’s having the ball in his hands.
“And so the human struggle to want what you want, and AR is ascending to an All-Star level, but the human struggle to want what you want, while also having the emotional maturity and recognition that you got somebody next to you, it hasn’t been as clean. Losing a training camp and losing the start of the year and then kind of losing AR then for a long stretch, we’re starting to get it. But there’s a clear pecking order when Luka and AR are on the floor together with guys that are low-usage players. That’s just, that’s the nature of it. And that’s the nature of every, nearly every big three that’s ever existed. And we’re gonna get there. We’ve seen some positive signs. LeBron, he recognizes the importance of having Luka as the engine and all he really wants is to impact winning. I’ve said this now for the last two weeks: we’re gonna get there. We’re gonna get there.”