The Los Angeles Lakers’ 21-time All-NBA superstar power forward LeBron James has been out all year with a lingering sciatica injury on his right side and along his lower back.
On Wednesday, the 40-year-old participated in his first five-on-five workout since being felled by the ailment, per Shams Charania of ESPN. The four-time league MVP is testing out the nerve injury while on assignment with the club’s G League affiliate, the South Bay Lakers, as Los Angeles proper continues to work its way through an ongoing five-game road trip. Charania reports that James is eyeing a return at some point this month.
Without him, the Lakers have gone 8-4 on the young season. Beyond being run out of the gym in two blowout losses to the Oklahoma City Thunder and Atlanta Hawks during this road trip, LA already has looked like one of the best teams in the Western Conference.
So how concerned should the Lakers be about James suffering a re-injury when he’s finally reactivated for actual games?
To dig into this, Newsweek consulted with Dr. Todd Albert, MD - the Surgeon-in-Chief Emeritus at Hospital for Special Surgery in New York and a Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Weill Cornell Medical College.
For James, who’s already accomplished pretty much everything possible in a first-ballot Hall of Fame career that numbers among the best ever, there is one big, selfish reason for him to return sooner rather than later.
The four-time champ would no doubt be happy to make his record-extending 22nd consecutive All-NBA Team this spring. New league rules mandate that players suit up for at least 65 games a year to qualify. After the road trip, Los Angeles will have just 68 contests left in the 2025-26 season. Given James’ age and mileage, it’s highly unlikely that he’d be able to successfully suit up for all those bouts - even if he does manage to avoid any further sciatica issues.
“The reason you don’t get [back] faster is more I think abundance of caution a little bit because… let’s say he had surgery, and you did surgery and you went in with a little tube and took the disc out. You could get back in a month,” Dr. Albert said. “But it’s more about the risk of re-herniating it - meaning having it [as] a recurrent problem - and for somebody who has the problem, they could get back quicker, but if every time they go and start to try and crank up their activities, if they keep getting pain, you have to keep putting them down.”
For now, James has cleared the first bar - he has had a successful five-on-five workout without incurring further pain, per Charania. Can he keep this up?
“There’s nothing magical about the amount of time you say that he’s gonna be out… because the truth of the matter is, is he could come back in a month, and in a month and one day, re-injure himself,” Dr. Albert noted. “No one knows exactly what his sciatica entails. It could be ranging from only pain to weakness in his foot, where he’ll have a risk if he comes back of twisting his ankle and getting hurt. So his nerves control the muscles around the ankle and the foot and/or the thigh muscles or calf muscles. So if those are weak, it’s not like, if the motor’s turned off to him, you can rehabilitate him all you want, they may not get strong. And so you’ve got to find ways around that if he’s gonna try to come back and play either with the pain or if the pain’s subsided but he’s still weak. So there’s all these little elements of the ‘return.'”
With James unavailable, All-NBA First Teamer Luka Doncic and rising star Austin Reaves have shouldered more of the offensive burden. Across eight healthy bouts with the Lakers, Doncic is looking like an MVP, sporting averages of 34.9 points, 9.1 rebounds and 8.9 assists while galvanizing the offense with brilliant distribution and scoring. Through nine games so far with Los Angeles, Reaves has been averaging 28.3 points, 8.3 dimes and 5.1 boards per.
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