The Los Angeles Lakers managed to avoid the worst when LeBron James went down with a groin injury on Christmas Day against the Golden State Warriors. The best player in the world suffered the ailment in the third quarter of play, and while it looked bad at the time, an MRI came back clean and it was determined the muscle was intact.
Still, groin injuries can be tricky, and despite the fact that James managed to stay healthy for most of his professional career, this is a new one. For those reasons, Brian Windhorst and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN report that the Lakers are prepared to take the floor without James for several games as he gets back to 100 percent.
“The Lakers are calling James’ absence ‘day to day,’ but sources told ESPN there is a healing process that needs to occur before James can return to the lineup,” they wrote.
The report included that both James and the Lakers want to take a pragmatic approach to this, and that neither side wants to rush James back. Of course, the more skeptical basketball fan would say this is a sabbatical a la his two-week long injury break in 2014 that eventually led to the Cleveland Cavaliers trading for J.R. Smith, Iman Shumpert, and Timofey Mozgov, but time will tell if that’s the case.
