{"id":577492,"date":"2026-04-01T01:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T01:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577492\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T01:30:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T01:30:09","slug":"injury-report-lebron-james-sam-merrill-and-more-ahead-of-lakers-vs-cavs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/577492\/","title":{"rendered":"Injury report: LeBron James, Sam Merrill and more ahead of Lakers vs. Cavs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Injury report: LeBron James, Sam Merrill and more ahead of Lakers vs. Cavs<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> head to Los Angeles for Tuesday’s game against the Lakers<\/a>, in a matchup of LeBron’s current and former teams.<\/p>\n

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Los Angeles enters the matchup having won 12 of their last 13, including Monday night’s 19-point win against the Washington Wizards<\/a> on the first night of a back-to-back.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Lakers are third in the West, just one and a half games over the Denver Nuggets<\/a> with seven games remaining.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the Cavaliers have won six of their last seven games as they continue to hunt down the New York Knicks<\/a> for the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n

Cleveland trails New York by one game, but the Knicks hold the tiebreaker if the two teams were to finish the year with the same record.<\/p>\n

Ahead of Tuesday’s game, each side will be without at least one key contributor.<\/p>\n

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For Los Angeles, former Defensive Player of the Year award winner Marcus Smart has been ruled out with an ankle contusion.<\/p>\n

LeBron James has been listed<\/a> as questionable, after playing on the first night of a back-to-back Monday.<\/p>\n

For Cleveland, they’ll be without a few of their three-point shooters.<\/p>\n

Dean Wade has been ruled out with an ankle injury. Jaylon Tyson is also sidelined due to a toe injury.<\/p>\n

The Cavaliers will also be without Sam Merrill who is listed out with a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n

Following Tuesday’s game, Cleveland will face the Warriors<\/a> before returning home for three of their final five games.<\/p>\n

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As for Los Angeles, they’ll begin a brief two-game road trip beginning with Oklahoma City Thursday.<\/p>\n

More NBA news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Injury report: LeBron James, Sam Merrill and more ahead of Lakers vs. Cavs originally appeared on The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,17603,233324,1662,201094,2873,47572,481,9034,590,1666,5673,158531,85,3198,7211],"class_list":["post-577492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-dean-wade","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-jaylon-tyson","tag-lakers","tag-lebron","tag-los-angeles","tag-marcus-smart","tag-nba","tag-new-york-knicks","tag-oklahoma-city","tag-sam-merrill","tag-sports","tag-warriors","tag-washington-wizards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}