Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Lakers Lose 111-101 to Celtics, LeBron Suffers Groin Injury, Could Miss Significant Time

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

The Lakers finally hit the wall, losing to the Celtics Saturday in Boston, 111-101. The offense grew stagnant in the second and third quarters before LA started making shots and made a game of things. But the big news was LeBron James, who left with about six minutes remaining, and didn't return. While JJ Redick had no immediate update following the game, he looked like a very concerned head coach, and early reporting from ESPN's Dave McMenamin indicated LeBron's absence could be measured "for a matter of weeks, not a matter of days."Plus, Luka Doncic appeared to be bothered by a back issue throughout the game, Rui Hachimura is at least a week away from another reevaluation of his knee strain, and Jaxson Hayes also missed the game because of a knee contusion (which was downgraded on Saturday) suffered during the Knicks win.Not good.Hosts: Andy and Brian KamenetzkyYour favorite podcast now has a newsletter! In One-stop for ultimate team and league coverage delivered right to your in box. Sign up for free now, at lockedondaily.com.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!OpenPhoneThe #1 business phone system designed to help you keep your work and personal life separate.Right now, OpenPhone is offering 20% off your first 6 months when you go to OpenPhone.com/LOCKEDONNBA.and if you have existing numbers with another service, OpenPhone will port them over at no extra charge!PrizepicksNow’s the perfect time to join.Download the app todayand use codeLOCKEDONNBA to get $50 instantly when you play your first $5 lineup! That’s right—no need to win to get the bonus, it’s guaranteed. PrizePicks—Run Your Game!Click Here: https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONNBADoor DashThey Swoosh, You Save: when any player scores 50 or more points in a game during the 24/25 NBA regular season, DashPass members save 50% on an order, up to $10 off with promo code NBA50. 50% Off 1 Order (Up to $10 Off)Offer valid from 9:00 AM PT through 11:59 PM PT after a 50 point performance in any game during the NBA season on orders placed at participating merchant locations. Valid only in the United States. Maximum value of discount is $10.00. Discount applies to subtotal only; does not apply to fees, taxes, and gratuity. Not valid for pickup. Limit one per person. Not valid for the purchase of alcohol. Fees, taxes, and gratuity still apply. Must have an active DashPass account. Use promo code NBA50 to redeem. See further terms and conditions at https://drd.sh/8ONpZP/. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey everyone, welcome to Locked on Lakers, a bonus episode on a Saturday into Sunday, Brian Keminetsky, Andy Kaminetsky. Lakers lose in Boston and may have lost LeBron for a little while. How was your Saturday? That's next. You are Locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for making Lockdown Lakers. First listen to every day, Monday through sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays, no matter how or where you get your podcasts, always free. We're never going to put this bad boy behind paywall and locked on Lakers on YouTube

is where over 33,000 subscribers went from super joyous to very worry in the span of about three and a half quarters in Boston. Lakers get off to a very nice start against the Celtics, but the do eventually fall behind, can't come back. They lose 111 to 101, Andy, but big news is, of course, LeBron James leaving in the fourth quarter about about six minutes left to go or so. As the Lakers were actually starting to chip away a bit and looking like if not a comeback was inevitable,

they were at least starting to make a legit attempt at it. They got Boston's lead down to four. From 20. Yeah. To give people the framing here. So the Lakers, D, and we'll talk a little bit about what happened in the game. here, but the, you know, LeBron leaves with a groin injury and Dave McManneman, JJ Redick after the game said he had no update immediately, which makes some sense.

Like it was late in the game. He, as he said, not that I didn't care. I was trying to win a basketball game. But he is, Dave McManneman of ESPN reported that early indications, at least, before any testing and all that is done, is that LeBron's absence would be measured in week. as opposed to days. Now, it's a big difference. You know, two weeks is weeks.

So it doesn't necessarily automatically mean catastrophe. But obviously, as the Lakers, Andy, go into a very difficult portion of their schedule, March is pretty brutal. Missing LeBron for any amount of time certainly puts a dent in where they are in the West. You have a significant impact. It's just not good. It's also concerning because groin strains and that's how this was described to us. That's been an issue for LeBron since his first season with the Lakers when he injured his groin against the Golden State Warriors, that Christmas Day game.

And ever since then, it's something that has periodically been an issue for LeBron. You can tell that there was concern in that locker room because Austin Reeves afterwards was asked about his level of concern. And he basically went into a rambling answer to the one point he even said, like, I don't even know what I'm trying to. say right now, but it was very clear from the circular manner in which he was talking and describing LeBron, seeing him, I sing, like, he was concerned. He was worried, you know, like this, this was a problem and something that he, he and the rest of the team is clearly worried about. Yeah, and, and they should be. Um, you know, like you say, it is, it's one of these things that you, when you hear Dave say or when you see Dave say, you know, weeks, not, not days, you're, you know, because we went,

we just went through this sort of with Austin. We get that calf strain. You don't know how is that going to be, you know, a week, two weeks, whatever. We're getting to that with Rui where they say a couple weeks or whatever it might be. You start looking at it and you say, okay, well, that would just two turn into three. And it looks like he, the news before the game with Rui was, he started his stuff and he's, that seems to be going along. kind of as expected. And when they said a couple weeks-ish, like that looks like about the range, until you get a more definitive timeline on LeBron when you hear weeks and we're into March,

there just aren't that many weeks left. And I mean, and side note as well, too, Rui's absence combined with Jackson Hayes not playing in this game. He was downgraded because of a knee contusion. And there was a lot, there were a lot of sequences in this game where Boston was manipulating matchups to get Al Horford switched on to Austin Reeves, obviously too powerful for, for Reeves to handle near the basket. That was a reminder, those sequences over and over, that Rui and Jackson were both missing

and that they matter on this team. Oh, oh, before we're done too, just to make sure we. provide all of the updates. Luca was clearly, Luca Dantjic was clearly dealing with a back issue that began, it was noticeable during his warmups. He played the entire game and Luca made a real go at trying to lead the Lakers through this comeback. He finished with, excuse me, 34 points, 11 and 22 from the field,

eight rebounds, three assists, five turnovers. He was getting stripped a lot in the first half. I actually thought Luca, the whole team got very eye so happy, but I thought it really began with Luca in kind of midish first quarter through the second quarter. He seemed to be getting caught up in the mono-e-mono with Jalen Brown. Yeah, I don't know if it was that. I mean, it could be.

I agree with you. The game, this game was lost offensive. So it's clear. It was not just Luca. It was LeBron. It was awesome. Everything. reads the times.

Like it's not just him. I just thought it kind of began with Luca. Maybe. Because, yeah, I mean. The offense went from really flowing to all of a sudden devolving. And the,

the part where I noticed it devolving at least earliest was some of the ISO stuff that Luca was getting into. Yeah. I know. I, I, I, 1,000 percent agree with you that the,

the offense was too ISO-heavy. I mean, this is a Lakers offense that, you know, has been built on fluid, when it operates well, has been built on fluid, ball movement, a lot of assists. I think they only had 18 assists on the night.

I mean, that is even on, even on somebody else's floor with road scoring, that is a very low number. And so, you know, clearly the ball movement wasn't there for the Lakers. I think listening to JJ after the game, there was, some frustration on his part in that the offense may,

they guys may not have been really operating what they were being asked to do. I think the Celtics did a good job of encouraging ISO play, which is not the team's strength. Because if nothing else, even, you know, you have LeBron, you have Luca, you have Austin Reeves, guys like that who can generate, not just their own shop, but looks for other people off of ICE. isolation, it takes a lot of time. And so there were just too many possessions of working for 18 seconds with one guy off the dribble to maybe set up one shot or they end up having to

take their own or something. And so I think there was, I think that was both a probably a combination of player execution, what Boston was doing defensively, coaching in terms of really getting the right calls in. And then I think, too, the Lakers who have been very, very good at getting to the line and a lot of their offense to be fair is predicated on that this is a very physical game where getting the calls and i think was fairly consistently called um but the refs were clearly not in a mood to put everybody on the line sometimes when that happens i do think it takes the lakers time to adjust and this is pre lucca but lucca is a guy who also will hunt for and if you're not getting them,

sometimes you get stuck doing that and it gums up the offense. Yeah, I'm seeing some comments too in the section about Luca getting hacked on some of those plays where he got stripped. I mean, there were a couple times where it was pretty physical, like you said, they were allowing guys

to play. Even if you want to say that Luca got hacked on a few of those, it doesn't change the fact that he was going very ISO-heavy against really, like a often Jalen Brown, who was a very good defender, but just Boston has a lot of good wing defenders in general.

So even a guy like Luca, that can be a dangerous game to play. Yeah, it was, it just, the offense was really bad. I mean, they went, what was it? Like, how many minutes into the third quarter before they didn't even have a field goal? There was one point in the third quarter. They had scored four points in six minutes. Yeah, I mean, that's not good. And the cold spell really started in the second quarter.

It's not like it was like a new thing. They went, you know, just popped up in the third. They went 33 points, tied to 33 after one. Lakers scored 21 points. And again, most of that backloaded the last like seven or eight minutes of the quarter. In the second quarter, they scored 13 points in the third quarter and still managed to make a game of it in the fourth, which, you know, I saw a couple people saying in the chat, like, you know, if you're watching on YouTube the live show, like Lakers couldn't play defensively. It's like they scored 30 through 34 points in the middle two quarters and still kept the game

close. It is, you know, you're constantly playing in transition because you're constantly missing. You know, the balls, you're not getting good shots, all that stuff. And yet, Boston didn't run away with this game. Lakers defense was fine in this, you know, I didn't think there was a problem with the way they're doing. Both Boston stars had to work for what they got. Overall, 111 points. This game was lost offensively. Yeah, JJ talked about afterwards how Jackson Hayes' absence defensively.

He wasn't there to essentially play off Drew Holiday and be able to roam a bit and sort of serve as like a hybrid wing defender slash backline of defense. And again, that mattered with Jackson not being there with Rui not being there. You know, Al Horford, 14 points, nine rebounds, four assists, three steals. Like, he specifically is somebody that you think about on both sides of the ball with Jackson and Rui in terms of that matchup. Like that mattered. I mean, it's Brown and Tatum went off.

But in a lot of respects, those are the guys that you expect to go off. It's what do the other guys do? And I thought in particular that matchup, especially with, again, Boston manipulating it off. And so Austin was the guy guarding him. There were other factors too. Dorian Finney Smith got off to a very fast start, eight points in the first quarter, and then finished with eight points for the game. Another reminder of Rui not being there.

And for everything great. They needed more stuff. I mean, we'll take a quick break here. We'll come back. I do want to, let's shout out Al Horford, who is still very good at basketball. Like we, we spent a lot of time kind of more than what our audience wants, Brian? I just, I am impressed with, you know, as JJ said, I'm pretty sure.

Corales is doing that over at Locked on. I'm sure it is. I, you know, it is impressive what Horford is still able to do, particularly defensively. And he is an old man as well. So as a fellow old person, I do like to make sure these, that kind of success is no. So we'll take a quick break and come back here and talk about what will happen if the Lakers do need to play even more short-handed for a little bit. That's all next. I'm also doing this Horford celebration under protest.

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Lockdownlakers.com. Go to Lockdownlauggedon Daily.com. Then go to Lockdownlakers. You click there and you get the newsletter delivered to you every day of the week, Monday through Friday. This is an alarming moment for the Lakers, Andy, not just because LeBron is LeBron and he was having an influential game 22 points, 14 rebounds,

nine assists. So he was certainly on his way to a triple double. He was on triple double watch in the first quarter. Yeah. So he, you know, he's an assist away from getting there with a five or six minutes left in the games probably certainly would have, I would think, have finished with a triple double. But,

you know, with Rui out for at least another week or so, he's going to be re-evaluated again in about a week. So you're looking at a week to 10 days before he's back. Jackson, and Hayes hopefully not a super long-term injury, but the Lakers are short on players, and they are entering a very challenging stretch of the schedule.

So the question is going to be for JJ and the rest of the coaching staff is like, how hard do you push to try to keep this status that you've managed to achieve in the Western Conference? I'm like, they have an opportunity here to host maybe two rounds in the playoffs. But you got to get everybody there. I think the biggest priority is you make sure that you are maintaining at least a six seed.

So you are not falling into the playing altogether. We talked about that even well before Luca Donchich was a thing for the Lakers, just the idea that the goal for this season was that's your baseline. You avoid the play. And the Lakers have at minimum built up a pretty solid cushion to look to do that. They're five games ahead of Golden State for the six seed. Well, five games ahead of Golden State, you know, Golden State's into the six now. They've won nine of ten.

Warriors are playing great. Sure, but I'm just saying. They've got an extra, it's five and a half over Minnesota, who is actually the seven right now. Well, they've been just saying there's a little bit of a cushion between, you know, the magic, the magic seed there is seven as opposed to six. Fair enough. The point being, though, they have given themselves a cushion. I think some of this depends on which particular player you're talking about.

Like LeBron, for example, you give him every single millisecond that is required to heal up because A, he's really damn important. B, you might have heard he's 40 years old. And this is, again, a super, it's a tricky injury. Groins are always really difficult to deal with. And this is not LeBron's first rodeo with a coronin injury as a Laker. Like this is just a thing for him. So you got to give him all the time he needs. You know, with say Luca and whatever this back issue was he was dealing with that wasn't at least at the time of this recording clarified, you know, that might have a little more flexibility.

Maybe you go into Brooklyn and you feel like Austin and a supporting cast should be able to be. beat Annette's team that doesn't particularly want to win anyway. And you give Luca that night off. You give him a few extra days to rest up. I would be stunned if LeBron is available for this road trip at all. But the idea would be that you try to give Luca a little extra rest for the upcoming Box and Nuggets games that are going to be really difficult. Jackson Hayes hopefully just comes back.

And beyond what we were talking about with the, size that he provides and some of the defensive mismatches, Boston was able to manipulate, Jackson is a really good source of easy points. And those easy points on a night where the offense fell apart, it's a reminder of a dude that can just catch and dunk is useful. He fits into what they do when things are flowing well because he does move well. He rolls. goals. He's that vertical threat the Lakers don't otherwise have it. Like, you know, Trey Jemison, as always, played really hard. He played, but he only played six minutes. You can tell, like, this may not work. Like, it's just there, you certainly, like, he just can't do certain

things that, that Jackson can. And, you know, I think they, they saw pretty quickly, like, they were just going to have to play small this entire game. It is a, you know, for the Lakers, going to be, we'll see what happens, I guess, with the diagnosis. But, you know, once you get through, you mentioned this road trip, it goes Brooklyn, Milwaukee, Denver. Then you get Phoenix at home, San Antonio at home, two teams that are kind of struggling. Denver again, Milwaukee, Chicago, they're still kind of trying to keep themselves in the conversation in the Eastern Conference. Then it's another road trip. Orlando working real hard to solidify a better seed. Indiana, again, Memphis, obviously working hard.

Houston, Golden State, New Orleans, Oklahoma City twice. And by now you're getting into April. And so, you know, if LeBron misses a month, he comes back with three games left, four games left. That's enough for him. But it's just, you do wonder what that looks like where they are in the standings. I would think, though, that they could hold on to that five and a half game lead, at least say, in the top six.

Sure. Again, that's the baseline goal. If for no other reason, then if you avoid the play in A, you made the playoffs. B, you get that extra time to wrist. LeBron, no question.

And that groin and everybody else. Like, the top six is hugely important, even if it ends up anticlimactic for what the Lakers appeared to be, if not solidifying, making a real possibility for themselves. It's what, it is really nice to be up here. as much as it would sort of suck to see that seeding that they've managed to work their way up and with the loss on Saturday, the Lakers moved back into third behind Denver.

But it is a five-and-a-half game cushion to avoid that eventuality is a nice place to start. So we'll probably learn a little bit more about LeBron, if not on Sunday, probably going into Monday. Don't expect them to play Tuesday in Brooklyn. Rui will probably be gone for that one as well. So the Lakers can be short-handed. We'll see what happens to Luca for that game. Lakers do get an extra day off. Monday in Brooklyn.

I'm sorry, Monday and Brooklyn, but they get an extra day off before they play the back-to-back. So we'll see. Not a great night, not a great Saturday for the Lakers. Hopefully it will not be a catastrophically bad one. But there's a lot of space between LeBron's going to be out for a couple weeks and worse things. Lock on Lakers on YouTube as we go hang out with over 33,000 subscribers.

We will be back for Monday and hopefully with a little bit more news. Everybody have a great, great rest of your weekend.