{"id":317747,"date":"2025-12-01T04:36:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T04:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/317747\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T04:36:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T04:36:12","slug":"will-lebron-james-play-in-back-to-backs-for-lakers-jj-redick-discusses-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/317747\/","title":{"rendered":"Will LeBron James Play in Back-to-Backs for Lakers? JJ Redick Discusses Plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret that LeBron James’ age is a factor at this point in his career, but even at 40 years old, he isn’t opposed to playing back-to-backs. <\/p>\n

Head coach JJ Redick told reporters<\/a> Sunday that the Lakers are “going to build him up” to playing back-to-back games, noting that both James and the coaching staff are interested in him playing in back-to-backs. <\/p>\n

James missed the first 14 games of the season due to sciatica on his right side before\u00a0making his debut<\/a>\u00a0on Nov. 18 in a win over the Utah Jazz. On Sunday, James was\u00a0ruled out<\/a>\u00a0of the Lakers’ matchup against the New Orleans Pelicans because of foot management.<\/p>\n

Even before James’ injuries to start the season, the Lakers reportedly planned to avoid putting extra strain on him. ESPN’s\u00a0Dave McMenamin<\/a>\u00a0reported in September that Los Angeles wanted to be “overly cautious” with James to focus on long-term goals and keep him healthy for the playoffs.<\/p>\n

That could mean holding James out of certain games, especially those that come during the second night of a back-to-back, but for now, it seems he’s willing to suit up two nights in a row.<\/p>\n

Through his first four games of the season, James hasn’t had to play quite as big a role as he’s used to, which could also help him stay on the court late into the season and avoid injury. While he’s still playing 30-plus minutes a night, he’s focused more on distributing the ball than scoring, posting 16.5 points and 8.3 assists per game.<\/p>\n

James is afforded the luxury of taking a backseat thanks to his co-star Luka Don\u010di\u0107, who is playing like an MVP so far this year. The second-year Laker leads the league in scoring (35.1) and averages the second-most assists per game (9.4), adding 8.5 rebounds per contest.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Don\u010di\u0107’s efforts, the Lakers are off to a 14-4 start to the season despite James playing just four games thus far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s no secret that LeBron James’ age is a factor at this point in his career, but even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-317747","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-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317747","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=317747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}