LeBron James claimed to “hear a pop” in his proper ankle after touchdown awkwardly on it whereas lacking a layup within the third quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers’ 111-108 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday.

James was in a position to end the sport out and assist his group win from a 27-point deficit – the largest comeback victory within the NBA this season – however that may have additionally been attributable to the truth that head coach Darvin Ham was unaware of what had occurred.

Certainly, he performed the veteran for an extra 20 minutes within the fourth quarter, later claiming: “I did not hear that. I did not hear him say that in any respect.”

The harm occurred as James drove on Dwight Powell and missed a layup with three minutes remaining on the clock. He tried to plant his sneaker within the paint and twisted his foot awkwardly on the way in which down. As he lay on the ground, grimacing, he turned to the Lakers bench and mentioned “I heard a pop”, however this was solely picked up by the ground microphones on the telecast.

He acquired some therapy on the facet however then went on to play by the ache to see out the sport, scoring 26 factors, eight rebounds and three assists in 37 minutes. The 38-year-old was seen limping across the locker room afterwards.

“It has been higher,” James mentioned later in a press convention. “That is for certain. However I positively wasn’t going to go to the locker room and never end the sport out tonight. Simply understood the significance of the sport, after which with the momentum that we had, I felt like we may nonetheless win after being down”.

“We’ll monitor it the subsequent couple days, see the way it feels and go from there.”

LeBron has additionally been nursing soreness in his different foot for a number of weeks, an ailment that brought on him to overlook a number of video games, and can probably linger into the offseason. He has detailed it as a stress harm that flares up and requires him to be attentive on a day-to-day foundation.

Ham tried to treatment these considerations saying “he is good. Our medical persons are taking a look at him now. He’ll be re-evaluated once more within the morning. So as soon as we get some sort of official phrase tomorrow, we’ll go from there. However as of proper now, he is good”.

The Lakers are spending the night time in Dallas on Sunday earlier than flying to Memphis on Monday to proceed their three-game journey with back-to-back video games towards the Memphis Grizzlies on Tuesday and Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder on Wednesday.