LeBron James Begins On-Court Activity; There’s Optimism He Could Return for Final Few Regular Season Games

It seems that April 5 against the L.A. Clippers is a potential target return date for LeBron. That would give him three regular-season games to ramp up for the playoffs or Play-In Tournament, wherever the Lakers end up in the standings.

Also given how close the Western Conference standings are, those final three games could very well determine whether the Lakers qualify for the postseason at all so getting James back would be huge.

At age 39 and with LeBron’s mileage though, the Lakers surely will not rush him back and risk re-injury as their title hopes would be crushed if James is not healthy for the playoffs.

Ham praised James for being coach on bench while injured

Even though James hasn’t been healthy, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t still been involved with the Lakers as Darvin Ham recently praised him for being another coach on the bench.

“Just talking through different matchups, different guys, giving guys opportunities, throwing me a couple of nice ATOs to draw up in the huddle. It’s been great,” Ham said.

“He’s just been engaged and really talking through the mentality of how time is of the essence, there’s only 10 games left and we really got to push through and try to make this thing happen. So just his presence, at shootarounds, even though he’s not able to participate physically, just his presence being around and talking to the guys, giving them confidence, building them up and helping us out as a coaching staff with things that he sees.”