Your 2-10 Los Angeles Lakers will once again most likely be missing their best player for the second straight game, as they square off against All-NBA forward Kevin Durant and the Brooklyn Nets tonight.
The Lakers at least have the edge in time off, as the Nets’ newfound defensive power led them to defeat the Los Angeles Clippers 110-95 at Crypto.com Arena yesterday, while the Lakers’ most recent game happened on Friday. The team has risen to an actually competent 6-7 record, thanks in large part to its 4-1 run with head case Kyrie Irving away from the team.
For Los Angeles, James is listed as doubtful to play, as he continues to deal with the left adductor strain that ultimately held him out of Friday’s Laker loss to the Sacramento Kings, per Mike Trudell of Lakers.com. Trudell notes that Anthony Davis is officially probable due to the tight lower back that has been hounding him all season to this point.
Irving has technically fulfilled the bare five-game minimum of his suspension for sharing an antisemitic film on his Twitter account, but Nick Friedell of ESPN reports that the seven-time All-Star will miss his sixth straight contest tomorrow.
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“That’s been out of our control,” Durant commented on the Irving situation, per Friedell. “So we just try to lock in and whenever that figures itself out, it will. That’s over a lot of our heads right now so we just got to control what we can.
Adam Zagoria of The New York Times reports that, in addition to Irving, the team will still be without forwards T.J. Warren (who hasn’t played a basketball game in two years due to an ongoing foot injury) and Yuta Watanabe (dealing with a left ankle sprain), as well as two-way point guard Alondes Williams.
The action kicks off at 6:30 p.m. PT on NBA TV and Spectrum SportsNet.