NEW YORK — As LeBron James stood in front of his visitor’s locker at TD Garden late Saturday night, he downplayed the concerns surrounding the groin injury that sidelined him for the final 6 ½ minutes of the Lakers’ winning-streak ending loss to the Boston Celtics.
“Not much concern,” James said. “Obviously, we go day to day, look at it each day, see if it gets better, and take the proper measurements to see what we need to do going forward.”
And while the initial assessments of James’ injury are in line with his comments, the Lakers still will likely have to navigate the next couple of weeks without the 40-year-old star in the lineup.
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported on Sunday that James is expected to miss at least 1-2 weeks because of a strained left groin – a timeline that suggests the injury isn’t too severe, as James expected, but an injury that’ll continue to be monitored in the coming days.
“I mean, hopefully it’s nothing,” Luka Doncic said postgame on Saturday. “Obviously to get injured at this time, those injuries are – I don’t want to say the worst, but they are tough to deal with. So, just take his time and we got to have as a team a next-man-up mentality.”
James said that the first thing that came to his mind after hurting his groin on Saturday was the groin tear he suffered during the 2018 Christmas Day game against the Golden State Warriors during his first season with the Lakers in 2018-19, which caused him to miss 17 straight games and over a month of action.
He added that he doesn’t feel this groin injury is as bad as that one – which the initial assessment suggests is the case. James also suffered a less severe groin injury during the 2022-23 season in a loss to the Clippers on Nov. 9, 2022, missing the next five games.
James immediately responded, “yeah, for sure, for sure,” when asked if he’ll remain with the team during their four-game trip, which continues on Monday against the Brooklyn Nets and concludes with a back-to-back against the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday and Denver Nuggets on Friday.
He added on his status for the trip: “Hopefully. We’ll see what happens in the next few days and then go from there.”
But this groin injury will likely keep James, who’s listed as out for Monday, sidelined for a significant amount of games during the Lakers’ compressed stretch of games over the next couple of weeks.
In addition to Monday, the Lakers are set to play seven games in 11 days – including three consecutive back-to-back sets.
The Lakers were already dealing with multiple injuries before James’.
Coach JJ Redick said on Saturday that Rui Hachimura, who’s been sidelined since Feb. 28 because of left patellar tendinopathy, will miss at least another week because of the injury.
Dorian Finney-Smith won’t be available for Monday’s game against the Nets because of left ankle soreness. Doncic is questionable for Monday because of back soreness while starting center Jaxson Hayes, who sat out of Saturday’s loss because of a bruised right knee, is also listed as questionable for the matchup against the Nets.
The Lakers (40-22) enter Monday as the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, percentage points ahead of the Denver Nuggets (41-23), who they’ll play twice in a span of six days – Friday at Ball Arena and March 19 at Crypto.com Arena.
James has been a constant during the Lakers’ strong play over the last two months.
Even with Saturday’s loss, the Lakers have gone 20-5 since Jan. 15, tied with the Oklahoma City Thunder for the best record during that stretch. They have the league’s best defensive rating (108) and third-best net rating (plus-8.8) in that span, with James leading the way with averages of 26.9 points (52.8% shooting, 37.5% on 3-pointers), 9.1 rebounds and 8.1 assists in his 24 games since Jan. 15. That stretch included games with Doncic and Anthony Davis (traded to the Dallas Mavericks for Doncic), with James winning Player of the Month for February.
“It’s a next-man-up mentality,” Austin Reaves said. “We’ve had many situations where a player deals with some type of injury or a trade or whatever it is, and we’ve done a really good job of bouncing back. And I don’t expect anything else.
“Not one person’s gonna do what LeBron does for us. But you can do it as a collective. And hopefully he gets back out on the court soon.”
LAKERS AT NETS
When: Monday, 4:30 p.m. PT
Where: Barclays Center, New York
TV/radio: Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM