Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James exited from the team’s game against the Celtics on March 8 with what was termed as a groin strain and hasn’t played since. He initially stayed with the team for the remainder of the road trip but eventually returned to Los Angeles to continue his rehabilitation process.
At the start of the week, Shams Charania of ESPN reported that James was expected to be out about another week and the team had no intention of rushing him back..
So, what exactly does that rehab process look like?
In the initial stages, we can call it Phase 1 or recovery, which involves allowing the muscle to calm down and for the pain to dissipate. This is typically done through a combination of rest — deloading the muscle — and interventions, including manual treatment and other assisted devices. These can vary depending on athlete preference and injury specifics.
Additionally, LeBron is known to focus on holistic factors, such as making sure he gets 12+ hours of sleep and that would be even further emphasized during injury recovery.
Once that pain has subsided or is within acceptable ranges, you can start to gradually load it again. We can call this Phase 2 or early loading.
Mike Mancias, LeBron’s personal trainer, would potentially implement a gentle and progressive stretching protocol to load the region along with targeted strengthening to build it back up.
If the response is positive, the next phase is a combination of increasing the load through stretching, strength and conditioning and moving to basketball activities. We can call this Phase 3 or intermediate loading. An example of this came prior to Sunday’s game against the Suns when LeBron took part in individual basketball drills.
If that went well, he will start to ramp up with more intense activities, Phase 4 or advanced loading. This would progress to more intense basketball activities, like active shooting drills, cutting, jumping to simulated basketball.
That last bit usually involves 1-on-1 to eventual 5-on-5 and typically includes a full practice, although that hasn’t always been the case with James because he is given a bit more leeway with his understanding of his progress along with having very limited practice time later on in the season).
After those benchmarks, the next step is getting back to games, which is Phase 5. He would initially have a minutes restriction that is gradually increased until he’s fully cleared for his regular minutes. In the initial stages, he might not be cleared for back-to-backs, depending on how he responds to game minutes.
The overall theme is a gradual yet progressive physical and mental step-by-step loading process. When he previously had a similar injury in 2022, he missed roughly two weeks and this looks to be a similar timeline. The good news is that it didn’t seem to bother him again for that season, which bodes well for his process and outlook this time as well.
Dr. Rajpal Brar, DPT has a doctorate in physical therapy from Northern Arizona University, and runs his own in-person and onlinesports medicine and performance business, 3CB Performance, in West LA and Valencia, CA and combines hismovement expertiseandfitness trainingbackground to rehab & train elite athletes.
He also works at a hospital — giving him experience with patients in the immediate healthcare setting and neurological patients (post stroke, post brain injury) — and has been practicing for over 5 years. Brar is additionally training at UCLA’s mindful awareness research center (MARC), has a background in youth basketball coaching and analyzes the Lakers from a medical and skills perspective for Silver Screen and Roll and onhis own YouTube Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at@3cbPerformance, on Instagram, and on his weekly Substack 3CB Quick HIITS