Everybody knew there was bad news by the time Darvin Ham, the thoughtful, softly spoken coach of the LA Lakers, walked into the media area next to the home locker room at the Crypto.Com Arena early on Sunday evening.
It was two hours before the tip-off of his team’s regular season game against the Portland Trail Blazers and Coach Ham had come to talk about LeBron James with a group of 15 or 20 mildly crestfallen journalists.
The 38-year-old superstar, the coach confirmed, was to miss his first match of the season with a ‘left calf contusion’.
He was pressed for more and more details until his press conference became an extended medical bulletin. The gloom, the sense of anti- climax, was palpable.
A Lakers game without LeBron is like a court without its king.
LeBron James remains a dominant force in the NBA, despite being 38 years old
The Los Angeles Lakers star is in his 21st season in the NBA but shows no signs of slowing down
The Lakers star missed his team’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday night, after picking up calf injury in the game against the Phoenix Suns
peculation about James’ injury had been rife since he limped away from the previous game against the Phoenix Suns.
The idea of him not being available had been discussed in apocalyptic terms. Analysts did not try to hide how reliant the Lakers were on James’ enduring brilliance.
James won his fourth NBA title back in 2020, when he steered the Lakers to their first championship in a decade
The veteran superstar remains the Lakers’ most influential players, despite his age
Just to repeat — James is 38 years old. In that game against the Suns, he was nine years older than the next oldest player in the Lakers starting line-up.
He is old enough that a LeBron James Museum will open next week in his home town of Akron, Ohio. He is both a museum piece and a man excelling among players nearly half his age.
At the start of this season, he agreed a plan with Coach Ham that would limit him to 30 minutes of the 48 over four quarters as a half-hearted concession to his age. That plan was dead within a couple of matches. James was playing more minutes than anyone else.
