LeBron James probable vs. Blazers after tweaking ankle in loss vs. Pacers

After the Lakers practiced on Tuesday, head coach Darvin Ham provided a brief update on LeBron James, saying the superstar had his ankle looked at after he appeared to injure it on Monday night against the Indiana Pacers.

James, 37, briefly left the 116-115 loss after landing on Tyrese Halliburton’s foot during the first quarter, heading down the tunnel with his longtime trainer Mike Mancias to examine his leg before returning to get it stretched out on the bench and checking back in during the second quarter.

The Lakers are officially listing James as probable for Wednesday’s matchup with the Portland Trail Blazers, but not with any ankle issue, still with the same adductor strain he has been listed with for weeks:

James’ movement did look a bit hampered after returning on Monday, but he still managed to score 21 points and grab 7 rebounds in 36 minutes of playing time, so the issue clearly wasn’t debilitating. But he is already starting to see little knicks and knacks pile up just 19 games into his 19th season. Jamses has missed six games this year so far, and Monday was only in his third game back after most recently missing five in a row with an adductor strain. The other game he missed was with soreness in the same left foot he had this current ankle issue in.

Still, given his “probable” designation and the fact that he is not being listed with a new injury, it seems like James avoided any serious, new issue here. We’ll see how he continues to look when the Lakers host Portland on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. PT, but for now, it looks like he and the team can take a sigh of relief that this wasn’t as bad as it initially looked when he left Monday’s game.

For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Harrison on Twitter at @hmfaigen.