Lakers: Insider Reveals LeBron James May Deal With “Dire” Foot Pain All Season
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During the new episode of their must-listen podcast #thisleague UNCUT, Chris Haynes of Bleacher Report and New York Times reporter-turned-Substack scribe Marc Stein spoke about the health of your Los Angeles Lakers' best player.
Haynes revealed that the injury that kept LeBron James on the shelf for the second straight game last night could last for the rest of the year which is, well, not what you want to hear.
"I was told that [during LA's] Tuesday game, the record-breaking game," Haynes told Stein, "LeBron was severely struggling with that foot injury he has. It's something that's been nagging him for a few weeks already, but it gets to points where it just gets unbearable. And he plays through it... People that talked to me said he was really struggling with that foot. The way it was explained to me is that sometimes it flares up, different sides of his foot, depending on I guess the cut, the way that he plants sometimes."
"That might be something that lingers all season long," Haynes continued. "But it reached a dire point. But what's interesting is that he sat out Thursday's game, they said, because of an ankle injury, not the foot. So that's something to monitor as the season goes along as well. I think that's going to be something that he's probably going to deal with through the course of the season. He may get asked about it now... I was told it reached a pretty unbearable point Tuesday against OKC."
Stein had a salient point in response:
"He must clearly be well shy of 100% because the Lakers are in a position now where every game is must-win. I mean they don't have time," Stein noted. "They're 56 games in, they're down to their last 26 games. If he didn't play [Thursday] last night that tells you that he ain't right because they have no more margin for error. They've got to start stringing some wins together in a hurry."
