Lakers were becoming Luka’s team. LeBron’s injury speeds that switch

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1. LakerTom says

   October 11, 2025 at 7:35 pm

   Someday, the Los Angeles Lakers were going to be without LeBron James, the question of “when” looming over the organization and paralyzing them from either pushing all in or fully embracing a future without him.

   The unexpected opportunity to acquire Luka Dončić last season set the team fully on a new path forward, with James’ continued presence on the roster no longer the team’s guiding star.

   Still, the news Thursday that the 40-year-old star would miss at least the next three-to-four weeks because of a sciatic nerve issue on his right side was fairly jarring.

   First, it’s the words “at least,” which weren’t specifically used in the team’s announcement but were strongly implied when it said James would be “reevaluated” after that time frame.

   Second, we can take the things we’ve heard in private and public in the build to the season regarding James’ health plan — most notably the league sources who said that James was going to take a different approach in his 23rd preseason in an effort to have him as healthy as possible at the end of the year and not at the beginning. And with that information, it seems more than safe to assume the Lakers will be conservative with James’ recovery; that could mean more time for recovery or ramp-up (or both) following that three-to-four-week timeframe.

   Four weeks plus, say, one week for a ramp-up would have James out of action until early November. In some ways, this only forces the Lakers to stick to their plan, which, when it comes to James, has been notoriously difficult to adhere to. Coaches have talked about minutes restrictions and lessened workloads in training camp for years, only for James to have a 40-minute night by the seventh game.

   Coach JJ Redick said unlike last year, this preseason will “be a slower process with (LeBron) leading into the first game.”
   The injury could keep James from his 22nd straight All-NBA appearance by cutting into the chunk of games he’s allowed to miss under the league’s 65-games-played rule for awards.

   The Lakers will likely lean on some combination of Rui Hachimura, Jake LaRavia and Jarred Vanderbilt to help fill the impossible hole left by the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. None of those players will be asked to do any of the things James does; they will, though, be asked to do more of what they do well in extended minutes while the Lakers are without one of their stars.

   Vanderbilt, healthy for the first time in two summers, has looked good early this preseason and gives the Lakers some defensive toughness and versatility they desperately need.

   Same goes for Austin Reaves, who has played well as the primary offensive player over the past two seasons when the Lakers have been minus James or Dončić or even, before that, Anthony Davis. He was already set for a big offensive role this season, but he’ll enter the season as the Lakers’ second-most important playmaker.

   League sources scouting the Lakers in the preseason debut in Palm Desert left impressed with how Reaves held up as the primary offensive option. More of that in the non-Dončić minutes is suddenly even more critical.

   The biggest thing that comes from this, though, is a chance for the Lakers to more fully lean into the reality they chose for themselves in February: Dončić drives everything they do. When healthy, Dončić is one of the NBA’s biggest floor-raisers, even if the roster isn’t perfectly built around him. He’s good enough to handle any stretch of challenges, including a first chunk of the schedule when the Lakers won’t be whole.

   This, of course, is his team to lead long-term, and whether the Lakers were going to explicitly say it or not, it was always going to be on James to figure out the best ways to make it work around Dončić more so than the other way around.

   That new reality wasn’t supposed to be thrust on them this quickly, and certainly not on opening night (a game James has never missed). But now that he’s out, the Lakers are squarely on their road forward.

   And LeBron James, whenever he’s healthy, will need to catch up.

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