Lakers News: Fresh Intel On Extent Of LeBron James’s Sore Foot

If Los Angeles Lakers All-Star forward LeBron James has looked like his athleticism has been impeded over the last few weeks, there's a reason: he has been dealing with a sore left foot throughout the start of the 2022-23 NBA regular season.

Per Mike Trudell of Lakers.com, Lakers head coach Darvin Ham revealed that James has been dealing with a sore foot for a while (it's been listed on the team's injury reports for almost every game), though, happily, King James has incurred no structural damage.

Trudell suggests that Ham opted to sit James last night in part because it marked the second evening of a back-to-back pair of games Sunday and Monday. So it sounds like that was really a maintenance decision more than anything more dire, which is a positive at least.

The down side of this news is that Ham also revealed that the foot ailment would be a "fluid situation going forward," per Trudell, a phrase that unfortunately seems to suggest this foot could cause a problem for a while.

James has been resistant to scaling back his output on the court, despite his advanced basketball age. His body is clearly not responding with the same ability to bounce back from injury it exhibited during most of his years with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Miami Heat, when he was one of the most durable superstars in the entire NBA. He's currently averaging 36.1 minutes a night, which may be too ambitious for his age. LBJ did average 40+ minutes a game in four of his first five NBA seasons (all with Cleveland), but that was before the "load management" era really took effect.

The current league leader in minutes per game is Cavaliers shooting guard Donovan Mitchell, at 39.2, but only two other players average over 38 minutes. James ranks 15th in minutes played per contest. Only two other players older than 30 are among the league's top 15 in minutes averaged per game: embattled Brooklyn Nets star point guard Kyrie Irving, at 38.6, and Philadelphia 76ers guard James Harden, at 36.8. Irving of course is sitting out indefinitely, so his average was only achieved with eight games, a relatively small sample size that may have leveled out had he continued to play. Harden is already out for a month with an injury after his heavy minutes load.