Lakers Injury Report: LA Downgrades D'Angelo Russell With New Ailment
Your Los Angeles Lakers' prodigal son starting point guard may miss an absolutely critical game tonight against the Oklahoma City Thunder with a brand-new injury.
Per Marc Stein, LA has downgraded D-Lo from available to questionable ahead of this evening's action with a sore right hip.
Now luckily, the Lakers happen to have one of the league's better backup point guards in Dennis Schröder, who started most of the season prior to Russell's arrival. He is not the same level of floor-spread three-point threat that opposing defenses have to respect, but he's still a solid scorer and an aggressive and engaged defender.
In the six games he started during Russell's most recent injury, a right ankle sprain, Schröder has been a somewhat erratic shooter, but has still (generally) managed to put up buckets. He averaged 14.3 points on .358/.200/.920 shooting splits during that span, plus 8.5 assists, 2.5 rebounds and 0.8 steals. For the year, he's making 33.8% of his 3.5 triples a game, a respectable clip right in line with his career average from distance (33.8% on 3.4 tries).
If D-Lo does have to sit, perhaps it's better that it happens now than later. The Lakers are about to embark on a home-and-home set of matchups against the Chicago Bulls and Schröder's old Thunder-era head coach Billy Donovan. Chicago is a talented team, albeit one that's but much less deep or athletic than the Thunder, and one that's lacked a lot of cohesion this season. Losing to the Thunder isn't great, but losing to the 34-38 Bulls would be much worse.
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