Sometimes, basketball isn’t fair. Just as the Los Angeles Lakers seemed ready to celebrate a dominant season-opening win, Jake LaRavia appeared to roll his ankle multiple times on the same drive and ended up heading to the back in what appeared to be considerable pain.
It’s a cruel twist of fate for a player who was the Lakers’ iron man a season ago. Moreover, it was a reminder of how important he is to an alarmingly thin rotation of wings.
LaRavia and the Lakers were up 116-83 with less than six minutes left on the clock when he went down. There’s still reason to celebrate the 127-105 win over the Golden State Warriors, but the apparent injury has yielded significant questions for a Lakers team that lacks ideal depth at forward.
For those interested in seeing what happened, a video of the injury can be viewed at this link. For those who'd prefer not to see the injury as it happened, it was an ankle roll on a high-velocity drive that ultimately required LaRavia to be helped off the court.
Thankfully, Lakers reporter Jovan Buha is reporting that, while head coach JJ Redick doesn't yet have an update, he did say that the injury may not have been as bad as it looked:
"JJ Redick said there is no update on Jake LaRavia yet, but that Redick is feeling more positive about the injury than when it initially happened."
The Lakers will need to keep their fingers crossed for the sake of their rotation.
Jake LaRavia suffers apparent ankle injury late in Lakers' blowout win
Ideally, LaRavia will walk away unscathed and the Lakers will ride a fully positive wave of momentum into their next game. In the event that it’s an injury, however, Los Angeles will have a tough time replacing him—especially with Cameron Carr and Adou Thiero battling injuries of their own.
It’s an unfortunate way to remember that LaRavia is a pivotal piece of their puzzle despite the questions about his jump shot.
LaRavia appeared in all 82 of the Lakers’ games a season ago. He stepped into the starting lineup while Luka Doncic, LeBron James, and Austin Reaves all missed at least 18 games themselves, and slotted back into the second unit without compromising his defensive intensity whenever the trio was healthy.
There were concerns over the fact that LaRavia shot just 32.1 percent from beyond the arc, but he did just about everything else for a team that lacked ideal wing depth.
Lakers lack the wing depth to easily replace Jake LaRavia
What makes this potential injury hurt so badly is that LaRavia appears to have resolved many of the issues with his jumper. Austin Reaves spoke about how hard LaRavia has worked to become more consistent as a shooter and the work was reflected in his play during the preseason.
That seemed to translate to the regular season opener, during which LaRavia tallied 10 points, two rebounds, two assists, and a steal on 2-of-3 shooting from beyond the arc.
Jake LaRavia vs Warriors:
— Laker Performances (@LALPerformance) October 22, 2026
10 PTS 2 REB 2 AST 1 STL 100 TS% pic.twitter.com/0V3DqCIbgt
The good news is that Matisse Thybulle and Ziaire Williams thrived as a defensive duo in the opener, and Quentin Grimes was excellent as the Lakers' sixth man. Finding another forward who's ready to step up simply won't be easy, as Carr and Thiero are not just battling ailments, but inexperienced and unproven.
Redick will thus need to get creative if LaRavia either misses time or has to fight through injury-imposed limitations, as the Lakers simply don't have much forward depth to begin with.
LaRavia, Thybulle, and Williams were already being trusted to overachieve in 2026-27 relative to their respective injury histories or 2025-26 quality of play. Losing one member of that energy-means-everything trio could thus prove to be a monumental challenge.
At this point, all the Lakers can do is hope that the injury looked worse than it was and that LaRavia will be back at 100 percent sooner than later. Their wing depth can't afford to spend much time without him.
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