{"id":206403,"date":"2025-10-12T01:31:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T01:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/206403\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T01:31:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T01:31:16","slug":"lakers-luka-doncic-shares-new-statement-after-lebron-james-brutal-injury-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/206403\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers\u2019 Luka Doncic shares new statement after LeBron James\u2019 brutal injury report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lakers\u2019 Luka Doncic shares new statement after LeBron James\u2019 brutal injury report<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The ‘ 2025-26 campaign has already gotten off to a rough start, to say the least.<\/p>\n

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Los Angeles’ 26-year-old 5-time All-NBA First Team selection Luka Don\u010di\u0107 made it a point to get in the best shape of his career this past offseason, as he’d been preparing to take the floor alongside the Lakers’ 21-time All-Star LeBron James for a full season.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, James’ recently reported sciatica diagnosis<\/a> will keep the 4-time NBA champion out of action for 3-4 weeks, leaving Don\u010di\u0107 alone to lead the storied franchise into a pivotal early-year stretch.<\/p>\n

Following the news of James’ extended absence, Don\u010di\u0107 recently told media members that he and the rest of the team will take on a new mentality<\/a> with the future Hall of Famer sidelined for the immediate future.<\/p>\n

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“It’s a big change,” Don\u010di\u0107 shared with ESPN’s Dave McMenamin on Saturday.<\/p>\n

“He’s 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

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Though he’ll be entering his 23rd NBA season, James’ presence will be sorely missed by the rest of his Lakers teammates throughout the beginning stages of the year.<\/p>\n

In 70 appearances with the franchise in 2024-25, James nabbed an All-NBA Second Team selection by averaging 24.4 points, 8.2 assist and 7.8 rebounds on a 60.4% true shooting percentage.<\/p>\n

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Los Angeles was on the receiving end of a demoralizing first-round exit in the 2025 postseason at the hands of the in James and Don\u010di\u0107’s first taste of playoff basketball as teammates, but there’s reason to be confident in the Lakers making a deep postseason run in 2025-26.<\/p>\n

For that to happen, though, they’ll need to get the most of out of James as possible before he rides off into the sunset. In the meantime, their recent free agent acquisitions like Jake LaRavia, Marcus Smart and Deandre Ayton must step up until the all-time great returns to the floor.<\/p>\n

More NBA:\u00a0Celtics’ Chris Boucher, Hugo Gonzalez get big updates in battle for lineup roles in Boston<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lakers\u2019 Luka Doncic shares new statement after LeBron James\u2019 brutal injury report originally appeared on The Sporting News.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[100911,49,48,94933,12882,12886,5407,2327,1522,12887,9472,459,82],"class_list":["post-206403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-all-nba-first-team","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dave-mcmenamin","tag-deandre-ayton","tag-jake-laravia","tag-lakers","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-luka-doncic","tag-marcus-smart","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206403","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=206403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}