Everything we know about LeBron’s injury, recovery time and return date
By Ian Levy
The ankle injury LeBron James suffered this weekend against the Atlanta Hawks has the potential to alter the NBA season. Here’s everything we know.
Even without Anthony Davis, the Lakers had been cruising. They won four straight coming out of the All-Star break and still had the best defense in the league by a wide margin. But then Solomon Hill collided with LeBron James’ lower leg in the scramble for a loose ball and the Lakers’ title hopes were shaken.
LeBron stayed in the game long enough to hit a 3-pointer but eventually left the game and didn’t return. Later we heard that the diagnosis was a severe ankle sprain. But does that mean for his prognosis and the Lakers’ chances of defending their title?
What do we know about LeBron’s injury, prognosis and likely recovery time?
The initial release from the Lakers was that LeBron had suffered a high ankle sprain and was out indefinitely. In a TikTok video a sports medicine doctor named Dr. Jesse Morse (who had not actually examined LeBron) pegged the earliest possible return date for this kind of injury as three weeks. Later reporting from Shams Charania identified LeBron’s recovery window as the somewhat vague “several weeks.”
At this point, we just don’t know when exactly LeBron will be able to return to the court or how long it might take him to regain his rhythm. The Lakers are also without Anthony Davis who is recovering from a calf injury and is not expected to return any time soon.
The Lakers have just under two months left in their regular season, with May 16 as their final game of the year. In theory, Davis and LeBron should both be able to get back on the court and shake off some rust before the playoff start. But nothing is certain when it comes to the human body.
In the short-term, the biggest concern for the Lakers is how to avoid falling too far in the standings. Playing without LeBron and Davis puts them at a serious disadvantage and they’re just six games ahead of the Warriors for the No. 9 seed. If things get ugly, they could be fighting just to make the playoffs by the time LeBron returns.