LeBron James Set to Return to Practice With Lakers Next Week

LeBron James, sidelined since Dec. 25 with a groin strain, will remain out until at least next week, the Los Angeles Lakers announced Wednesday. The team said in a statement that James did not travel with the Lakers on their current road trip for games against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday and the Houston Rockets on Saturday.

The Lakers have struggled without James — and without Rajon Rondo, their backup point guard, who was also injured in the Lakers’ road win over the Golden State Warriors on Christmas Day. Entering Thursday, the Lakers had gone 4-7 without those two players and were tied with the Sacramento Kings for eighth place in the Western Conference standings.

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After their current trip, the Lakers will return home to play the Warriors on Monday — which, incidentally, is slated to be Game 2 of the Warriors’ well-publicized DeMarcus Cousins experiment as he returns from surgery on his Achilles’ tendon — but it is highly unlikely that James will be available. The Lakers said in their statement that James “has been cleared to return to practice commencing next week, and progress toward a return to game play thereafter.”

James, 34, had been fairly indestructible thus far in his career. He appeared in all 82 regular-season games for the Cleveland Cavaliers last season. But while the Lakers initially listed James as “day to day” after he underwent a magnetic resonance imaging exam last month, the team has been handling him — and his eventual return — with caution.

James was playing some of the best basketball of his career before he got hurt, averaging 27.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 7.1 assists a game. A four-time N.B.A. most valuable player, he is in the first year of a four-year contract worth $154 million.

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