Lakers News: LeBron James's Health Status Updated Ahead Of Pistons Game

Could the Lakers star be back in the fold as L.A. hopes for a second win?

Los Angeles Lakers All-Star forward LeBron James, who has been sidelined for L.A. since last Wednesday with a left adductor strain, has seen his status improved to questionable ahead of tomorrow's very winnable Crypto.com Arena contest against Cade Cunningham and the 3-12 Detroit Pistons, per Marc Stein.

James had been doing his darnedest to play through a sore left foot since the start of the 2022-23 regular season, but it finally may have led to this additional injury.

L.A. has gotten off to a rocky start to the season, bumbling its way into a miserable 3-10 record. That said, it's nice that James, unsurprisingly, still affects his teammates in a positive way. Per Jovan Buha of The Athletic, Los Angeles is 3.1 points per game better on the court while The Chosen One plays. The team can't exactly tank, given that it still owes the New Orleans Pelicans the right to swap first-round draft picks in 2023.

James has not looked like quite himself this year. Through his first ten games, James has seen a lot of his shooting numbers take a dip this season. He is averaging 24.9 points on .457/.239/.667 shooting. He The 6'9" vet is also pulling down 8.8 boards, 6.9 dimes, 1.1 steals, and 0.7 blocks.

Formerly a bulldozer in the paint, James has been notably less interested in driving inside for his offense during the Lakers' last two seasons. He's getting to the free-throw line significantly less than his career average (4.8 attempts vs. a career mark of 7.8). He's taking more triples (7.1) than ever before, with the exception of his 8.0 tries in 2021-22. All this makes sense, as at age 37 and in his 20th NBA season, the 18-time All-Star is striving to preserve his body, which has more minutes mileage in the league than all but one player, former Lakers great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

The next mission for James, should he choose to accept it, is to scale back on his minutes. He is averaging an unsustainable 35.7 minutes a night, which may have been fine when he was 30, but is now just too risky. Sitting on one night of back-to-backs and managing his minutes load will need to happen, ideally sooner rather than later, should James want to have a shot at playing more than 60 games this season.