LeBron James: Ankle injury feels 'horrible'

Lakers star LeBron James scored 39 points in New Orleans on Sunday, but it wasn’t enough to lead his team to a win over the Pelicans, who came back from a 20-point halftime deficit to beat L.A. by a score of 116-108. To make matters worse for the Lakers, James turned his left ankle in the second quarter and said the injury felt “horrible” after the game, as ESPN’s Dave McMenamin writes.

“I mean, I have no idea how I finished the game, to be honest, after watching that replay,” said James, who played 42 minutes. “It’s pretty nasty.”

The loss dropped the Lakers to 10th in the West, and they now lead the No. 11 Spurs by just one game and face a difficult schedule in the last two weeks of the regular season. James, who has already been battling a knee injury this season, is hopeful that his latest ailment doesn’t force him out of action at all, with L.A. battling to secure a play-in spot.

“I hope not, because I hate missing games,” he said on Sunday night, per Kyle Goon of The Southern California News Group. “That’s not in my nature, so I’ve already started the process of treatment right after the game, I got on it right away and obviously I’ll get more done on the flight and we’ll land in Dallas tonight, around the clock tomorrow and see how I feel on Tuesday.

“… I still feel like if I’m on the floor and I can make things happen then we still got a pretty good chance to make something out of this season.”

Here’s more on the Lakers and LeBron:

• James’ ankle injury felt like “the moment that might signal the end of the Lakers season,” according to Bill Oram of The Athletic.
• James referred to Sunday’s game, in which the Lakers turned a 20-point halftime lead into an eight-point loss, as a “microcosm” of the club’s season, per Andrew Lopez of ESPN. “We haven’t been able to sustain all year, and tonight was one of those instances once again,” James said. “It feels like s–t. I mean, excuse my language, but that’s what it feels like. I came in with the mindset understanding it was a playoff-type atmosphere, playoff implications and things of that nature. … It feels like a wasted opportunity, obviously, for myself and for our team. We weren’t able to get it done.”
• Head coach Frank Vogel acknowledged how precarious the Lakers’ position is, telling reporters on Sunday night that “time’s running out” on the team, writes Broderick Turner of The Los Angeles Times. “We got to get some wins. We got to put some wins together and turn the attention to Dallas,” Vogel said, referring to L.A.’s Tuesday opponent. “Whatever it takes to beat Dallas, we got to do.”
• The Lakers will play in Dallas on Tuesday and Utah on Thursday before hosting the Pelicans on Friday and the Nuggets on Sunday. It won’t get any easier from there, as they travel to Phoenix and Golden State next week.