LOS ANGELES — Lakers reserve guard Marcus Smart was sidelined for the third consecutive game on Monday night against the Phoenix Suns, but the team is confident he isn’t dealing with a long-term concern with his back.
Smart was ruled out against the Suns on Monday afternoon because of lower back injury management – a change in injury designation after being listed as out for last Friday’s victory over the Dallas Mavericks and Sunday night’s win against the New Orleans Pelicans because of back spasms.
Coach JJ Redick said Smart played through back tightness in last Tuesday’s victory over the Clippers but the tightness worsened the next couple of days, leading to Smart getting imaging.
“Imaging was unremarkable,” Redick said. “Looked like a normal 11-year NBA veteran. We’ve all gotten that MRI, so we’re not concerned long-term. It’s a day-to-day thing. I had a number of those, like week-to-two-week episodes during a stretch of my career when I played for the Clippers, and it would just pop up. And you would feel like you’re progressing, and then it would kind of plateau. So we expect him to be back soon. It’s not a long-term thing.”
LeBron James was back in the lineup against the Suns after sitting out Sunday’s win because of left foot injury management.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Lakers star Luka Doncic on Monday was named the Western Conference Player of the Week for games played from Nov. 24-30.
New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, Doncic’s former Mavericks teammate, was named the Eastern Conference Player of the Week.
The honor marked Doncic’s first as a Laker and the 15th weekly award of his career.
Doncic led the Lakers to a 3-0 week, recording one 40-point outing and two 30-point performances – all double-doubles. He averaged 37.3 points (48.5% shooting overall, 45.5% from 3-point range), 10.3 assists, 8.7 rebounds and one blocked shot last week in victories over the Clippers, Mavericks and Pelicans.
Austin Reaves was a nominee for Player of the Week.
ROTATION
After being in the rotation to start the season in light of the team’s injuries, forward Jarred Vanderbilt entered Monday as a DNP-CD (did not play – coach’s decision) in the Lakers’ previous five games.
He wasn’t in the team’s first-half rotation against the Suns on Monday night after playing in the Lakers’ first 14 games of the season.
The 26-year-old Vanderbilt is in the second year of a four-year, $48 million contract extension he signed with the Lakers in the summer of 2023. He has a $13.3 million player option for 2027-28.
“He’s been good, he’s been a pro,” Redick said of Vanderbilt. “In the most recent stay ready [game] that we had this week, he was great. He’s been a great teammate. So, no surprise there. I had communicated to him, even before LeBron came back, that there were certain things that he needed to be able to do consistently to play before LeBron came back, after LeBron came back. And that there potentially was going to be a numbers crunch because we were probably going to play a nine-man rotation. And that was just the reality.
Redick added: “Having said that, it doesn’t mean that he’s not going to be back in the rotation at some point, whether we’re healthy or whether we’re missing a couple of guys. When you’re winning games, it’s hard to re-do the rotation mid-winning streak. So, we’re looking at everything. And there were some lineup combinations when we were injured that we had to go away from and he was caught up as sort of an innocent bystander, in some ways, to that. I certainly had empathy for him. It’s not a fun situation to be in as a coach, and it’s certainly not a fun situation for him to be in as a player.”