Lakers center Jaxson Hayes has been diagnosed with a left ankle sprain, the team announced today. As Dave McMenamin of ESPN details, the injury occurred during Tuesday’s practice and will force Hayes to miss at least a few games. The club’s plan is to reevaluate the big man’s ankle in one-to-two weeks.
Hayes has played a regular role in the Lakers’ rotation this fall and is coming off his best game of the season. He had 12 points, six rebounds, and a block in 21 minutes of action during Sunday’s win over Toronto, with the Lakers outscoring the Raptors by 21 points during his time on the floor.
The Lakers are also missing center Christian Wood, who will be out until at least mid-December, so their options in the middle will be limited until Hayes is ready to return.
Anthony Davis figures to handle the majority of the minutes at the five, with two-way center Christian Koloko also in the mix. Small-ball lineups that deploy a forward like LeBron James or Rui Hachimura as the de facto center will also be an option for head coach J.J. Redick.
Here’s more on the Lakers:
- The Lakers are now operating just $30K below the second tax apron rather than $45K below it, since they took on a $15K cap charge for Jordan Goodwin, who was injured prior to the season while on an Exhibit 9 contract with the team, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks. The second apron isn’t technically a hard cap for the Lakers at this point, but if they aggregate salaries in a trade this season, it would become one.
- The Lakers consider it a priority to add frontcourt depth, sources tell ESPN’s Dave McMenamin (Insider link). However, the front office has “been met with more closed doors” than usual while scouring the trade market, according to McMenamin. It’s unclear whether that’s a function of the cap, tax, and apron restrictions facing teams around the league, a reflection of the limited appeal of the Lakers’ trade chips, or a combination of both.
- During a discussion about possible Lakers trade targets on the latest episode of the Hoop Collective podcast (YouTube link), McMenamin said Wizards center Jonas Valanciunas is “certainly a name that’s legitimately still on the Lakers’ radar.” McMenamin also mentioned Robert Williams of the Trail Blazers and Nic Claxton of the Nets as possible targets for L.A., though that sounded more like speculation than hard reporting. “Because they won in 2020 with the Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee combo next to Anthony Davis,” McMenamin explained, “Anthony Davis never let go of that idea that, ‘That’s my best chance to win with LeBron, to have that extra layer defensively,’ and quite frankly, help him get through the slog of the regular season in terms of the beating that he’ll take on the block battling these guys.”
- In case you missed it, the Lakers plan to have rookie guard Bronny James suit up for the South Bay Lakers only during home games, rather than having him travel on the road with the G League affiliate. Shams Charania reported those plans last week, but they’ve reemerged as a popular topic of discussion today after Brian Windhorst criticized the decision on the latest episode of the Hoop Collective podcast (YouTube link).
Bronny to good to travel with the scrubs. But it’s not nepotism at all.
Reason Lakers are not getting any takers they only have draft picks appealing. Rob keeps thinking somebody wants Dlo.
For Wiz he’s cap relief….
LMAO Nic Claxton. Sean Marks not trading him for Lebron.
I mean… he repeated a lot of other mistakes too, lol. But I don’t think Claxton is on the block for anything less than a mega deal.
Vucevic > Valancunias. Same caliber of defender and rebounder, but Vuc can space.
They have the same career percentage from 3.
Vuc taking more doesn”t mean he’s better at it.
Vuc takes almost five times as many threes as Valancunias on their careers. He’s made over a hundred more threes than Valancunias has ever taken. Jonas has one season similar to Vuc’s career average, and his current average is almost twice that. I understand that the percentages are the same, but the sample size for Jonas is tiny by comparison. That’s an apples-to-oranges comparison just based on style of play, let alone anything else. Valancunias also is much slower as a jump shooter than Vuc is (more time for a contest), and worse in terms of accuracy on jumpers from every other range as well.
I bet they really miss Castleton now. Shouldn’t have let him go to Memphis where they have so many bigs.
Miss Huff , Castleton played too small
Howard and McGee are both free agents…
Vucevic is too expensive… Valanciunas is a really solid big, but both don’t bring what the Lakers need the most, which is rim-protection and defense…
Brook Lopez is their best choice.
Walker Kessler is very good, but, for today’s championship run in arguably the NBA’s (and the whole basketball world and maybe the whole sports world) greatest franchise, he’s still green…
Absolutely, AD needs to get over his silly thoughts that the alignment around him on his one championship team might be the best alignment for him to win another. After all, the 2k world has spoken. What could he possibly know about his game that they don’t?