LOS ANGELES — The Lakers were without starting forward Rui Hachimura and backup center Jaxson Hayes for the third and fourth consecutive games, respectively, on Tuesday night, but there is hope they’ll both return within the next week.
Hachimura was officially sidelined because of a sprained left ankle – a correction in his injury status after being listed on the injury report because of a sprained right ankle in for the Nov. 15 road win against the San Antonio Spurs and the Nov. 16 victory over the New Orleans Pelicans.
“We’re hoping to have him back this week at some point,” Coach JJ Redick said ahead of the Lakers’ NBA Cup Group Play matchup against the Utah Jazz at Crypto.com Arena.
Hayes has been sidelined since spraining his right ankle during a practice last week.
The team originally gave a 1-2 week timeline for Hayes’ return, with Redick saying that Hayes is expected to be available again within that timeframe.
The Lakers host the Orlando Magic on Thursday and the Denver Nuggets on Saturday before playing back-to-back road games against the Phoenix Suns (Nov. 26) and San Antonio Spurs (Nov. 27) next week.
“He’s progressing well,” Redick said of Hayes. “He was able to do some stuff on the court. I think the next step for him is probably just … he was really good with linear. It’s more just all the other movement stuff that he’s gotta continue to build up his strength. Again, like Rui, we’re hoping to have him back at some point this week, but we expect him to fit within that time period of two weeks.”
Cam Reddish was back in the starting lineup after missing the win against the Spurs because of a right peroneal strain – irritation or inflammation in the tendons that run along the outside of the ankle and foot.
Reddish started alongside LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Austin Reaves and Dalton Knecht, with the latter making his third consecutive start in light of Hachimura’s absence.
OFFENSIVE MOVEMENT
The Lakers’ offense has featured more movement under Redick, with the Lakers finishing 9.7 possessions per game via handoffs or players coming off of screens compared to 6.2 last season.
They’ve also been running fewer pick-and-rolls.
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Redick explained why they’ve taken this approach.
“There’s a bunch of different ways to play offense,” he said. “If you have a team that can consistently break defenders down and touch the paint and get two on the ball, or if you have a player like a [Dallas Mavericks star] Luka [Dončić] who can consistently get two on the ball, you can in some ways afford to not run a ton of off-ball action and dribble handoffs.
“With our personnel, the best way for us to shift the defense and create a little bit of confusion and chaos is to not play stagnant and to utilize screening, to utilize dribble handoffs. Sometimes that’s [Anthony Davis] is the handler with the small, sometimes the off-ball screen becomes like a pin [dribble-handoff] for LeBron [James] or a flip screen to a [dribble-handoff]. Sometimes it’s just the off-ball stuff, but that for us has been really good. I don’t know the exact numbers as of [Tuesday]. But I know not just volume-wise, but I know points per possession were toward the top of the league in both those things. And it’s been good for us. Conceptually, that works for our team.”