After participating in this morning’s shootaround, Gabe Vincent (left ankle sprain) has been upgraded to available for the first time since October 26, while LeBron James (sciatica) is being considered a game-time decision when the Lakers host the Jazz on Tuesday night, tweets Dan Woike of The Athletic.
James, who practiced with the Lakers on Monday, said his lungs felt “like a newborn baby” and that he was still working on getting his conditioning and his voice back to normal, writes Khobi Price of The Southern California News Group.
“I got to get my lungs back up to a grown man,” James said. “My voice is already gone. One day back, barking out calls and assignments and stuff, getting my voice working again. Be a lot of tea and rest (on Monday night).”
James’ record-setting 23rd NBA season has been delayed by sciatica on his right side, which forced him to miss the start of a season for the first time in his career. The 40-year-old told reporters, including Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times, that he also dealt with sciatica two years ago, referring to it as “not fun.”
“If you ever had it, you go about it and you wake up one day and you hope that when you step down from the bed that you don’t feel it,” LeBron said. “You go to bed at night, and you hope that when you’re in the bed that you don’t feel it. So I’ve been doing pretty good with it as of late. There’s a lot of exercises and a lot of mobility things and a lot of things you can do to help it. So I’m just keeping a positive mindset.”
James will go through his normal pregame routine in the hopes of playing on Tuesday, per Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter video link).
Here’s more from around the Western Conference:
- Warriors forward Draymond Green wasn’t fined for his face-to-face altercation with a fan who was heckling him in New Orleans on Sunday (Twitter video link), but the NBA did issue a warning over the incident, a source tells Charania (Twitter link). “He just kept calling me a woman,” Green said of the fan after the game, per Nick Friedell of The Athletic. “It was a good joke at first but you can’t keep calling me a woman. I got four kids, one on the way; you can’t keep calling me a woman. He got quiet, though. So, it was fine.” The fan told The Associated Press that he was chanting “Angel Reese” at Green after the Warriors veteran rebounded several of his own missed shots.
- Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga (bilateral patellar tendonitis) will miss a third consecutive game on Tuesday when the team faces the Magic in Orlando, tweets Anthony Slater of ESPN. Reporting last week indicated that there are no structural concerns with Kuminga’s knees and that the forward’s absence should be “relatively short-term.”
- Trail Blazers guard Jrue Holiday missed Sunday’s game – a loss to Dallas – and is listed as doubtful to play on Tuesday vs. Phoenix due to right calf soreness (Twitter link). As Sean Highkin of the Rose Garden Report (subscription required) writes, Holiday’s absence on Sunday was especially impactful because so many of Portland’s other point guards are sidelined due to injuries too. “Jrue is our core,” Blazers forward Deni Avdija said. “I feel like he does everything on the floor. He puts us in our positions. He’s a real true point guard and a leader. When he’s out of the game, it’s definitely felt.”
- Jahmai Mashack‘s new two-way contract with the Grizzlies is for two years, while Jamaree Bouyea‘s two-way deal with the Suns is for the rest of the season, Hoops Rumors has confirmed. Bouyea was ineligible for a two-year contract because this will be his fourth season in the NBA.
Great troll job by the fan. No profanity, no off court stuff. Just calling him Angel Reese is hilarious, especially when he rebounds 3 or 4 of his own shots in 1 possession,
Green shutting down Wemby and every tall player in the NBA shows he plays above the rim better than any player his size.
Hilarious heckling! It’s comical that Dray didn’t laugh about it honestly. To be called Angel Reese because he kept mebounding is great! What’s not great is that Dray took it as him being called a woman… I mean how do you not get the joke?
Calling a self-defined man a woman is not “hilarious” at all. Its sexism, transphobia and homophobia.
That fan had a more punchable face than even Draymond does. If he said that to me I would sock him up nice.
Good lord. Go outside and touch some grass. Please explain was this made up term “self-defined man” means?
So what you are saying is that be Draymond not being secure in his own manhood, that being called Angel Reese means he is being called a woman. So that sounds like the one who is homophobic and transphobic is Draymond. Which that checks out.
I spend all day outside, this is what regular, non-racist/sexist/homophobic people think, and you are actually a bad person IRL for defending an idiotic heckler with a punchable face vs an NBA player.
Once again, using pro sports as a vehichle for your hate is gross and I will call it out every time. So what you are saying here is worthless.
Davey, what are you talking about? The guy wasn’t being transphobic, homophobic, or anything of the sort. He was making a harmless joke that was blown completely out of proportion by Draymond going over there and threatening him like an insecure child. If he’d just ignored him, like anyone sensible, then he likely would have stopped.
And, seeing as you brought it up, maybe Draymond wouldn’t need to clarify his sexual orientation if he’d spent less time familiarising himself with other men’s balls. Like LeBron. And Steven Adams to name a couple.
Sorry, just thinking about Draymond clean-blocking Wemby…you were saying something?
Actually Green said he thought if was funny at first but the guy continued all game calling Green a women and it got on his nerves. i was at a game and a guy was calling a oppossing player a loser all game long. It got annoying after about 10 minutes of the same boring chants. Of course that player scored 50 points and won the game. So it is annoying…
I mean the guy saying it looked like the most annoying man on earth, so that tracks.
Guess who the player that scored 50 points that night turned out to be? It was a warrior game i was at that a warrior fan was doing the same annoying chant.
KD
Oh ffs he wasn’t calling him a woman. He was calling him Angel Reese because of the me-bounds.
It’s honestly more offensive that you think he can’t be compared to Angel Reese because she is a different gender.
You people believe in nothing. Please stay in California forever.
Calling a man by the name of a very famous woman is transphobic?
This poor kid is fried lmao
@bonercats, I think what Davey meant is that nobody in the crowd or, even, the TV announcers and TV audience understood about the “me-bounds”.
As in, nobody else got the joke…
So, it just came across as a drunk person screaming “hey, Angel Reese” at Draymond over and over… as in, “hey, you’re a girl”.
I think that’s incredibly naive. That one guy is the only guy who got the joke… plenty of other ways to call someone a girl… like calling them a girl.
I didn’t get the joke, and the Warriors announcers didn’t get the joke. How many people on this site know that Angel Reese is famous for getting her own rebounds? You’d have to follow the WNBA.
Hey Davey, is threatening violence a breach of TOS? You’re the expert on that.
Trolling? No, this guy was just drunk off his *ss. Shouting at an opposing player that he’s a girl for 3 quarters? That’s middle school stuff. After the first time, nobody is laughing. The big losers are the nearby ticket-holders.
Heckling is an art form, and a part of the game. Most pro athletes will take a clever heckle in stride. Go to a Knicks game for hecklers that do it right. Quality over quantity.
@aristotle
“Heckling is an art form” – correct, when done well, heckling is amazing. Saying “you are playing like angel reese…you are playing like a girl…you are a girl” over and over, isn’t quality at all.
BUT ALSO: simply yelling/saying “booo” also is the best form of heckling that always does the job.
Never seems to work on you
After a month of NBA basketball, the East vs West win percentage is 46-54%. Which is actually higher than this century’s average.
And that is despite the fact that hopeless injury-decimated Indiana has played only 5 games against the East but already 9 times against the West, boosting the West’s win ratio.
Other than that, the competition level is decent. And we’re certainly not seeing GSWs, LACs, Denvers and Memphises rolling through the East farming easy wins, or “the worst East in history” as so many people predicted. People who are mostly fans of the Western Conference teams and keep saying “It’s not fair that we’re in this conference, the East is so bad, my mighty Warriors/Lakers/Spurs would win 65+ games every year in the East”.
So why are there people on here arguing with me that the East is amazing and the West is garbage, when the opposite has been true for decades?
FYI – It is YOU who constantly argues with literally everyone.
Nope, you are gaslighting me with this comment. I make the comment and then yall disagree with me. There’s literally thousands of examples. Also, I’m not in the NBA or creating the headlines – talk hoops, not posters, or take a hike.
I’ve said this before, my takes are more “real life” than anything else in here. I watch Warriors games with a big crew at the bar. I read Dub Nation IG and twitter’s takes and mine are in line with any one of hundreds of peoples posts and comments, so no, you are wrong. I make the take – the people who know ball respond with respect, while cowards come in and cope. Then, now, forever. Which one are you? Nevermind, its obvious…
Get over yourself, Davey.
@Peter_Cantrope, I’ve been one of those who predicted the East would be unusually awful, mostly because of the injuries that would handicap Boston, Indy, and Philly. I also didn’t expect Philly and Chicago to be as improved as they apparently,
IMO, a big reason there has been more parity than expected since I made my prediction in August is the injuries that have befallen West teams since then. The Mavs, Clippers, Pelicans, Grizzlies, and Kings are all suffering from more injuries than expected.
Let’s talk about divisional parity again in January… by then, I predict the 4 near-certain tanking teams — Pacers, Hornets, Nets, and Wizards — will likely be joined by 1 other team. In the end, I expect a 44%-56% (East vs West) split.
@aristotle
The East has been weaker than the West for literal decades at this point. Need I remind you the 2007-08, 48-34 Baron Davis Warriors did not qualify for the West playoffs, meanwhile the 37-45 Hawks made the East playoffs that year?
@davey, I think you and I are in agreement about the West’s perennial superiority over the East.
I was responding to my respected friend, @Peter_Cantrope, who I took to be reminding me that I was EXTRA critical of the East’s prospects this past summer.
I don’t think that injuries have been more prevalent in the West. Teams in both conferences have their share of missed games by important players.
I just think that folks get too caught up in power rankings and top-whatever lists, and have painted the picture in their heads of OKC, Denver, LAC, Houston, Minnesota being 5 of the 6 best teams in the league, and that it’s super lopsided, and that 5 teams in the West would get 50+ wins while only 1 team in the East would achieve that, and that Chicago, Philly, Toronto, Charlotte, Miami would be mid-bad, and all them would struggle to get 30 wins, and that even with 30 wins one of them would make the playoffs etc.
A lot of the East-West stuff is talk, but one thing that is real is the win% against other conference. And last year it was not horrible at 45%-55%, and this year it isn’t either. Horrible was 03-04 when it was 37%-63%, and Western teams got more than 100 more wins. LeBron in Miami years were pretty bad too.
Let’s see what happens in the lottery. In 2018-2025, since “the process” Philly stopped tanking, 19 out of 32 top-4 picks went to the West, and only 13 went to the East, despite Eastern teams having worse records on average. 5 out 8 #1 picks went to the West, 3 to the East, one of them being Risacher. Western teams have risen in the lottery at the expense of the East.
And listen, I’m not saying that the East is as good or almost as good. It isn’t. And this year again there are too many blatant tankers. But when games happen, you have to win them to prove yourself. Denver lost both games against Washington last year, which cost them not being the #2-3 seed and having to play OKC before the conference finals. GSW lost 2 games against Milwaukee and Indiana already. It wouldn’t surprise me if Charlotte went on a road trip in the West, got inspired and returned with a 3-1 record or smth.
There’s a reason that most players have retired before they reach their 40’s! Lebron, are listening??
Because most of them weren’t/aren’t good enough to continue occupying space on an NBA court at that age.
That Jrue Holiday is quite a player!
My favorite back court two years ago. Holiday and White. Off the chart defense, both can score. Loved them together.
They were truly phenomenal. That Celtics team was built so well, they played both solid undersized guards, and had versatile bigs as well, such a perfect roster, they could battle anything. If only the Warriors saw this and fixed their current “90% small ball/10% regular NBA” roster to more 50/50 like that C’s one.
White, Brown, Jrue, Kristaps, Tatum is a nasty, nasty lineup.
Draymond’s reaction almost guarantees he’ll hear that again now that he let it get under his skin lol
and then what? He will play better and win more games from it? COOL
The only things Draymond has EVER done when made upset is cry. Not sure crying equates to winning big… guy? Them? Wouldn’t want to offend you Dave.
“Steph washed”
“Warriors dynasty is over”
“Curry is too old and coming to the end of his career”
Steph Curry put 46 and 49 on Wemby’s head in 2 games in 3 days in 2 wins. If you think he isn’t dab smack in the middle of his prime, you are wrong and do not know ball in the slightest. He has not slowed down even a little.
Curry’s “prime” WILL last into his 40’s. He might play til 50 if he stops being a 30+ MPG guy after the age of 45 – but he is 37 now, that’s NINE more years of Curry dominance you clowns and haters are going to have to live through!!! Hahaha Dub Nation STAYS on top!!!! Cope and seethe, hater trolls!!!!
Jebron Lames!
That’s a slap in the face to Angel Reese.
But, it’s good comparison.
Both are players their own team don’t want – and are so toxic that no other team will trade FOR them.
So, both their teams just have to put up with them and make due the best they can.
4 NBA rings + 1 college ring says what?