The Deep 3 Podcast - Does LeBron James' Injury Change EVERYTHING For The Lakers? | TD3 Clips

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Lebron James is injured. How will this change the lakers' start to the NBA season? #nba Check out the TD3 merch: https://the-deep-3-shop.fourthwall.com/ Listen on Spotify!: https://open.spotify.com/show/3elbbqVumwqz8wlIdknsLW Listen on Apple Podcasts!: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-deep-3-podcast/id1657940794 Follow us on TikTok!: https://www.tiktok.com/@thedeepthree Follow us on Instagram!: https://www.instagram.com/thedeep3podcast/ Isaac's twitter: https://twitter.com/byisaacg Mo's twitter: https://twitter.com/Mojo99_ Donnavan's twitter: https://twitter.com/Dsmoot3D Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here.

Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move. Lift with confidence, while Peloton IQ counts reps, corrects form, and tracks your progress. Let yourself run, lift, flow, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.C.A. It's only right that we start by talking about the main character of the NBA, who's been the main character for our entire lives. We have LeBron James news to talk about, specifically.

LeBron James is backhirts real bad, and he's going to miss the start of the season with sciatica. Oh! Approximately three to four weeks is going to be out, probably missing the first five to ten games of the season, and just answers the question, does this change everything for the Lakers? Is there season derailed? Oh, my God. Is this a sign that maybe. the contract negotiation stuff that's going on in the summer

is leaking into this season and their relationship is broken. What is to be taken away by the old man having a nerve injury in his lower back? This is a nightmare. You know why? Because this means that now the fate of the Los Angeles Lakers rest and the palms of one

dominating. Oh my God. He has to pick up the slack, right? Austin Reeves is going to be who Austin Reeves is, right? He might play a little bit better but he's just, he's going to do that. Luca, he's going to do that. The X factor the guy who needs to step up, the guy who needs to lead the Lakers and let them

and allow them to reach their potential being the top three seed in the Western Conference, that's dominating. It's officially over. That's what that means. The ball is going to be in your hands. That two-man game with you and Luca, Star, that's going to be at the center of Crypto.com Arena every single night. I need to see it.

So this obviously is the first old man injury, I think. The first old man moment of LeBron's career, this is an injury, a sciatica, that happens to senior citizens quite often from bending over wrong and pinching a nerve. So hilarious on that note that damn this guy's really, really old. The reason it's a talking point is because this story came out

from Dave McMenneman a couple of days after where apparently LeBron is monitoring the Lakers situation while he is out. He said, LeBron's got to be watching while he's out. If they're struggling, that could lead to the next step. When Rich Paul said the LeBron will be watching the Lakers every move

because the priority is to win, if they are not winning, maybe the Bra might have to go somewhere else. I just hear old man babbling at that point Leave him in his corner But he's a little You know what I'm saying Like

So yeah obviously I think this is a little bit of a projection And like duh LeBron's gonna be noticing the team Like he always does No shit It's not exactly breaking news Whether or not he has some like Timer on the Lakers

Given how they perform while he's out I don't know It sounds a bit of a stretch But outside of it being dramatic It is worth talking about How this injury is gonna like affect the start of their season Yeah this is this aspect is very funny

because it implies that like the lebron still has mad power yeah and it's like we we literally went through this the entire summer of of lebron and rich ball monitoring how the lakers were moving and you know that we have the story about that the lakers are prioritizing luka in the future and it's like oh wow would they prioritize their future with the 26 year old as opposed to the 40 year old i'm really shocked that that's happening yeah we had all of that there was there was the pseudo you know LeBron like I kind of don't really want to be here who want me and nobody really wanted LeBron because it's just hard to trade for LeBron in this like in this time with with his contract with the like weird evaluation of how you see LeBron being a player on your team in this season

as opposed to giving up assets and all this stuff so really like you said go sit in the corner oh man go watch your go watch your stories and just heal just get better because I don't think that whatever Rich Paul was talking about like of course it it's all just common sense, but I don't think it's anything actually revealing or anything that the Lakers should be worried about in terms of, are we going to change how we're moving up? You know, like, we're fine. It's okay. Yeah.

I think the interesting part is what does this have to do with their, like, start of the season in their standings? Because obviously this is going to be a season where we see the midcombe a more lucas-centric team on the court, too. Even outside of the off-the-court stuff you talked about, they're going to play through Luca. Increasingly more as the season goes on. We saw it last year, but it was weird given the injury he was coming off of, given

the fact that he got thrust into a team that was already existing. I am sure the majority of the offseason agenda on JJ Reddick's board is how do we move this team closer and closer to what makes Luka work. Now I feel like we're going to have to go 1,000% into Luka basketball with LeBron Gunn. Yeah, and when it comes to Luka basketball, how do you imagine at least like the first week or two weeks, three weeks into the season, depending on how much time, depending on when he'll be back? Like, who's going to be filling up that spot?

Is it Deklaravia? are you going to kind of go small and expect some like Marcus Smart we haven't seen just yet or are you going to like go all in when it comes to Vando? I was going to look like. Chad, who do you guys want to see Start for the Lakers in these first? Let's call it 10 games the seasons. Let's assume he misses that much time. I see all discussing the Hennessy ad and how that affects his legacy.

Let me know who you guys think should start because I think it's an interesting conversation because at one point this summer I was really not passionate but like preset and I think Marcus Smart should start in some way. That was before LeBron was out. I was thinking maybe he should start in place of Rui. But now that LeBron's out, I feel like there's an argument that maybe you should maintain that size and start Vanderbilt is you can make the spacing work with him in Aiton, who's like not a three-point spacer at all, but Aten's still like, he has a deep floater. He has a mid-range shot. He's not like a Gober non-shooter where you can't play anybody on the court with him and I can't shoot.

You can maybe make it work with Luca and Reeves being such good shooters. But I don't know. I'm torn still. Yeah, I think because of the versatility that Aiton has, you have, you have. have to keep you have to maintain someone like rey who has size and can shoot three pretty well um i want to usher in vando to just like go all in on size and hopefully if vanderville who i guess in the past has had like inklings of being a decent passer and connector if he can go into that role i think i'd be pretty comfortable and i feel decent about lucca carrying me throughout the first

like 10 12 games of the year yeah yeah i don't it's i also don't really care like who starts just because that specific that specific role with lebron out is obviously going to be a rotating spot and so you're going to you know what i'm saying like we're at the beginning of the year anyways and so jj is going to be out there trying out different lineups seeing seeing what lineups work the best and so you can go and start vando and he could play the first five minutes and then and then guess what boom what the hell so maligny me mad he's Tell me why I went ahead and I looked up, what is, what's injured called? Scadio.

What the fours? Wow. Try one more time? I don't even know. I don't remember what it's called. Scatio. Scatio. What is called?

Seattle. Seatica. I looked it up. And the first thing that I saw was that it's when a sharp shooting pain, it's a sharp shooting pain travels from your lower back or your butt down to your leg. Someone said that Georgia Southern education. Not even I wish But yeah, it is an old man injury for sure And I wonder if

So I don't care too much if you miss his five games Or 10 games even Which 10 games is kind of a lot So that's probably not what he's gonna miss Let's call it 5 to 7 I don't care too much about that As far as like their long-term outlook But I do wonder if we're already dealing with this

And there was kind of talks all summer That he is dealing with some small stuff And this is kind of like a continuation of that is it going to be like finally low managing lebron like in a meaningful way you know they talked about the past started last season he like rejected the idea was like this is some bullshit or was like two years ago now it was two years ago it was darvin ham so like he's like talked about it but now we're really an old man abron where you're having sciatica i wonder if we really do see some load management and that maybe you should like affect how we view their like placing the standings because i think

for this thing to be really really great you need like peak lebron yes this is what we were saying last year where like you can go into these into these series and like again I thought that they were going to run all over the Minnesota in the first round and obviously that that didn't happen but I never thought that the Lakers were going to have a deep playoff run because I didn't believe that LeBron could be a that LeBron could be at his best for two months right two and a half months that's a lot of basketball and so even if you take that away from playoff basketball and then you go to just the regular season of 82 games, even guys who are 25 in stars,

they don't play 70, 65 games at this point. It does not make sense for anybody to have the expectation that LeBron would play 65 games and that he would just be regular LeBron in that sense. Like, of course, he's going to have to be load managed. He's not going to be the same. He's 40, he's going to turn 41 during the season. It was always going to be.

get to this point. Yeah, I don't know where I heard this from, but I did hear LeBron. I don't know what platform he was on, but he talked about how his main focus is just being, making sure that he's healthy for the playoffs. And it feels like he's admitted himself to a degree that he is ready to just like beyond damn near cruise control for the entire year to make sure he's healthy for those 16 games in the playoffs. Did you all see the terrible last joke that Matt Barry made on ESPN? He said, I have an idea. Maybe he could roll some head to see on it. Everything will be fine. This was the lamest joke I've ever seen on TV. Just, he thought he got a bar.

He did. He's like, I got him. If you, even like, he got it. No, we did not. He got him. He's the most low-hanging shit I've ever heard of my life. Of course, it's low-hanging. It's like, I.

You got it. Terrible joke. But, yeah, I agree. It's because it's your king. No, it's not. This is so late. I just not respect the most of anybody if it's good. Exactly.

But I wonder if, um, yes, you said to the point that it sounds like he's already priming himself to be focused on the playoffs. completely. But what does that actually look like? Like every time we said that about LeBron, he still comes out on average of 25. And even last year after they got Luca, he was playing off ball a little more,

a little more focus on defense rebounding, was doing a lot of good stuff there. Still had the ball. His hands a good amount. Like, I don't know what it actually looks like for LeBron to be focused on his body. Like, is he going to buy into actually being like the Dremont Green role, like everybody says?

I don't know if he's in him. Like, there's only so much that he's going to do to lay off the gas, you know? Yeah. I honestly think that we all, always hear this, but this year it might be actually different because, bro, like, he's, he's going to be 41 soon, not even 40 anymore. That's crazy.

Yeah. And so, like, I think genuinely at this point in time, what's most important, this, who knows how many, how much time he has left. I'm assuming next year he's going to retire, who knows, maybe is this, just this year. But I think because of the fragile state that the Lakers are in in terms of there's not too much room for error, you're not, like, incredibly deep. We haven't seen this team play fully at all during preseason, whether it be Luca, whether it be, of course, LeBron, Marcus Marisand played too.

Darren Jaden has had some weird games when no one can walk away with World Takeaways. It's so vital for him to, like, genuinely be there during the postseason or else they have zero shot. So I think this year we'll see it. We're going to see Luca play tomorrow, Tuesday in Phoenix against the Suns for the first time. That's going to be our first look at him this season with Aidan, no LeBron, obviously. I wonder how this is going to factor into the, uh, Blooming Luca MVP argument

that happens every single year where it's always this is a time where Luca finally takes that mantle as best player in the world best guard in the world at least

and has an MVP season this would help the argument if he has to start off aggressively opposed to like trying to figure it out with the new system like he's not to come

out guns blazing we talk about it all the time if you want to win MVP great great first 2025 games yep great last 2025 games it's about the bookends

and you just do it do whatever you want from from December to March that's okay but for October and November also have a good Christmas Day game and we're we're there we're so we're so in there to get to get the MVP I I like it for for Luca and for his case also to go back to what you said about um LeBron and the Dremont Green Roll I actually think he'll be fine in that I actually think that he will embrace it because I do think that throughout his career LeBron has shown that like he'll do whatever he needs to do for the team to be successful and

for a majority of his career that's just been oh I just have to have the ball in my hands so and even like at the tail end of the Cleveland years in the regular season we saw LeBron

not necessarily be a defensive like goon because he knows like okay I have to save energy for the playoffs I think it'll probably be the same thing here where he conserves energy he picks his spots which he's already been doing for the last two to three years so I trust

I trust LeBron to do what's needed in that sense. And since they have Austin Reeves still, like I think Luca and Reeves, especially with only 7 and 10 games, that's enough ball handling. That's enough scoring points that you can make do. Now they have Aiden and they have Jackson Hayes. They have two competent centers for 48 minutes. Like they have the skeletons there that I still believe

Luca ball can keep them like above 500 without too much of a struggle. They have a pretty favorable start to their season. It starts off pretty easy. So I'm not worried about it for the Lakers. I think there's some silver linings for Luca getting going fast. Some silver linings for Aitin getting going fast. There's enough there to make up for the size discrepancy

without LeBron the lineup. Overall, I think it's fine. If there's ever going to be a time to miss LeBron, I think it being early in the season when rhythm matters for the other guys because LeBron's going to come in and figure it out regardless.

Yeah. This would be the time to miss some games, I think. Yeah, I agree.