The Los Angeles Lakers will be without superstar LeBron James to begin the season as it was recently announced he will miss the first Opening Night of his career due to sciatica on his right side.
Considering James is turning 41 later this year and entering his 23rd season, the organization isn’t going to rush him back from a nerve issue.
With that, LeBron is going to take a patient approach with his rehab and is targeting mid-November for his season debut, per Shams Charania of ESPN:
“I’m told that the Lakers and LeBron are looking at around mid-November as a realistic debut for him. And so, October 30 would be the earliest that the Lakers would be officially re-evaluating LeBron James. But it is expected he will need at least a few weeks after that point. A source told me tonight that LeBron will be taking a patient approach with this rehab from the nerve injury. So the ramp-up process for this will be a lot of basketball shape conditioning work, because remember, as I reported last week on NBA Today, LeBron James first suffered this nerve issue during an on-court workout in late July, early August. He wasn’t able to have that normal LeBron James offseason that we’re accustomed to. And as super-human as he’s been throughout his NBA career, he is turning 41 in December and he is in Year 23. So that’s the timeline on LeBron James, at some point in November, likely around that mid-November range.”
The Lakers said James would be re-evaluated in 3-4 weeks when they announced the injury, so this would fall in line with that timeline. Even if LeBron is deemed healthy enough to play when he gets evaluated though, it will take some time to ramp up for the season since he had no training camp or preseason.
L.A.’s schedule to begin the season is tough, but Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves are ready to take on a bigger workload in the absence of their co-star.
Luka Doncic emphasizes next man up mentality with LeBron James out
LeBron James is not a player that can be easily replaced, but the Lakers will have to manage until he comes back and Luka Doncic discussed what it will take to do that.
“It’s a big change,” Doncic recently said. “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.’ We got a group of guys that 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’s it.”
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