In a perfect world, no one would ever be injured and teams would always have their full rotation available to them. Alas, such a fantasy world does not exist in the NBA.
After having their eight-game winning streak snapped on Saturday night at the hands of the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers will be looking for a bounce-back performance against the Brooklyn Nets on Monday night in the state of New York.
Lakers fans would be forgiven for normally looking at this matchup and mentally chalking up the Nets as an easy win. However, that may not be the case for one key reason: the injury report.
Lakers head into Brooklyn with a lot of notable absentees
Both of these teams come into this contest as losers of their last game. The notable piece of good news for the Lakers would be the how common of an occurrence that has been for the Nets during their recent slump.
Brooklyn has dropped their last seven games in a row. Some of those have been tight losses, like their previous two contests against the Charlotte Hornets and Golden State Warriors. Other matchups have been resounding blowouts, like the outing against the Detroit Pistons.
On one hand, if there was ever a game to have a handful of injuries, this is not too far from the most desirable of circumstances. However, that should not create a false sense of security.
The Lakers have four names confirmed be out for this matchup. The most notable of those names should be well known: LeBron James. The Lakers superstar will reportedly be out for 1-2 weeks, according to Shams Charania, due to the groin injury suffered against the Celtics.
Rui Hachimura (left patellar tendinopathy) and Max Kleber (right foot surgery recovery) have been occupants of the 'out' section injury report for a while now. However, the addition of Dorian Finney-Smith (left ankle soreness) has crept into the equation for this matchup.
Jaxson Hayes (right knee contusion) missed the previous matchup against the Celtics. There was optimism that the Lakers starting center could return against the Nets, originally being listed as questionable. However, Hayes has since been added to the list of players who will be out for this game.
Lakers fans will want to keep a close eye on Luka Doncic (back soreness), who listed as questionable. Not having Doncic available would be a brutal blow to a team already down one top 10 player in basketball.
Perhaps it is truly better to see this many names filling up the list against a lottery-bound team like the Nets. The Lakers will undoubtedly need at least a few of those names to have less injury concerns surrounding them for the two big-time matchups that follow this one.
Thursday night in Milwaukee and Friday night in Denver will not afford Los Angeles the luxuries of feeling comfortable if they are short-handed. That is especially true when considering that every game moving forward is a key battle for positioning in the Western Conference.
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