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LeBron James will try to play Friday vs. Kings

LeBron James is close to making his return for the Lakers.

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Los Angeles Lakers v Charlotte Hornets Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images

The Los Angeles Lakers previously declared LeBron James as out on Friday vs. the Sacramento Kings, but according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, that could change, and James is going to attempt to play.

Shortly after Woj’s report, the team officially upgraded James to questionable for Friday’s game, and then Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that James was likely to suit up:

James has missed the last 20 games with a high ankle sprain he suffered against the Atlanta Hawks on March. 20. Potentially returning after being declared out may seem like surprising process, but this has kind of been James’ M.O.

The Kings took the news well:

The Lakers have avoided falling to one of the dreaded play-in spots in James’ absence, but they’re going to need him back in uniform sooner rather than later to stay in the top-six.

With 10 games left on their regular season schedule, the Lakers are only one game ahead of the No. 6 seed, the Dallas Mavericks. The Lakers will play the Portland Trail Blazers for the final time this season on May 7 and if they lose that game, they’ll lose their tiebreaker with Portland. They also lost their tiebreaker with the Mavericks earlier this month.

Before that crucial game against the Trail Blazers, the Lakers will play the Denver Nuggets and LA Clippers, two teams that are ahead of them in the standings. Obviously the No. 1 priority for the Lakers should be making sure James is healthy for the postseason, but they could also use him for that three-game stretch. But even if their next few games didn’t have serious playoff implications, it would be good for James to have more than six or seven games to ramp up before the start of the postseason.

Then again, James only had seven games to get ready for the playoffs last season, and we all saw how that turned out.

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