{"id":206071,"date":"2025-10-11T22:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T22:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/206071\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T22:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T22:11:07","slug":"lakers-taking-lebron-james-injury-in-stride-daily-breeze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/206071\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers taking LeBron James\u2019 injury in stride \u2013 Daily Breeze"},"content":{"rendered":"

EL SEGUNDO \u2014 The news the Lakers shared shortly after Thursday\u2019s practice made multiple things clear: LeBron James will miss Opening Night for the first time in his career because of sciatica (nerve pain) on his right side<\/a> when the Lakers host the Golden State Warriors on Oct. 21<\/a> to kick off their 2025-26 regular season.<\/p>\n

And the Lakers will likely have to play several games to start the season without James, who the team said will be reevaluated in late October or early November.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a big change,\u201d Luka Doncic said after Saturday\u2019s practice ahead of Sunday\u2019s preseason matchup against the Golden State Warriors. \u201cHe\u2019s a great player. He can help us a lot. But at the end of the day, our mentality needs to be next man up.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got a group of guys [who] have been practicing, and hopefully, LeBron can join us as soon as possible. We are going to obviously need him. But our mentality has got to be next man up. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

James had already been a limited participant in practices, with the Lakers previously saying James was dealing with nerve irritation in the glute, before the team announced the updated status of the 40-year-old star forward who\u2019s entering an unprecedented 23rd NBA season.<\/p>\n

Coach JJ Redick said after Saturday\u2019s practice that James has been on the court \u201cevery day\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew that he was dealing with the nerve irritation,\u201d Redick said. \u201cYou hope that he\u2019s back soon. Those things can be tricky. We knew this going into camp, so it wasn\u2019t like it\u2019s changed anything for how we want to practice or what our philosophies are with the preseason games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunday could provide the Lakers with their first opportunity at what they\u2019ll look like close to whole without James in the lineup.<\/p>\n

Doncic could make his preseason debut against the Warriors at Crypto.com Arena, with his status for the matchup not having been determined as of Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The Lakers have three other preseason games after Sunday: Tuesday at the Phoenix Suns, Wednesday versus the Dallas Mavericks in Las Vegas and Friday versus the Sacramento Kings in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got to talk about it \u2013 JJ and my team,\u201d Doncic said about Sunday. \u201cBut I\u2019m probably going to end up playing two games of the preseason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doncic fully participated in Saturday\u2019s practice after being a modified participant in the team\u2019s three practices earlier in the week and being a full participant to open training camp last week before sitting out the Lakers\u2019 first two preseason games last weekend.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old star said the change in his participation status was because he played for the Slovenian national team in EuroBasket from early August to early September.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously, it\u2019s a long season ahead,\u201d Doncic said, \u201cso just because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marcus Smart, who sat out the first two games<\/a> because of Achilles tendinopathy, is set to make his preseason debut Sunday. Austin Reaves will suit up against the Warriors after playing in the Oct. 3 loss to the Suns in Palm Desert<\/a> and sitting out the Oct. 5 loss to the Warriors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unclear what the starting lineup is gonna be,\u201d Redick said. \u201cThat\u2019s the reality until [James] is back. We\u2019ll have to figure that out.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the 2024-25 season ended and throughout the offseason, Doncic expressed eagerness for training camp and preseason, and the time it would provide for the entire team \u2013 but especially him, James and Reaves<\/a> \u2013 to further build their chemistry after having limited practice time following the trade that brought Doncic to Los Angeles in early February.<\/p>\n

Doncic still feels he\u2019s gotten value out of the time with James over the last couple of weeks, despite James being limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not everything about on the court \u2013 that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been saying,\u201d Doncic said. \u201cIt\u2019s about chemistry off the court, too. Now it\u2019s a little more off the court, but while we watched practices this week, we talked a lot about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Redick mentioned that he\u2019s noticed improved chemistry within the team\u2019s \u201csmall interactions\u201d during a scrimmage that ended in a tie Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, the best teams, the best groups, the best organizations in any field, small interactions are so important,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd how many small interactions can you have in a game? You should have thousands. \u2018Good screen. Good job. Good pass. I got you next time.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re starting to see from our group. We weren\u2019t great with that last year. That\u2019s part of our championship communication. That stuff is happening in real time, and we\u2019re really happy with the progress [we\u2019ve] made. Still got a ways to go, but it\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

WARRIORS AT LAKERS<\/p>\n

When: 6:30 p.m. Sunday<\/p>\n

Where: Crypto.com Arena<\/p>\n

TV\/Radio: Spectrum SportsNet\/710 AM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL SEGUNDO \u2014 The news the Lakers shared shortly after Thursday\u2019s practice made multiple things clear: LeBron James…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,5407,2327,12887,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-206071","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-lakers","11":"tag-lebron-james","12":"tag-luka-doncic","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}