LeBron out at least 3 weeks with foot tendon injury

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James will be re-evaluated in three weeks after team physicians diagnosed the forward with a tendon injury in his right foot, the club announced.

James suffered the injury while driving to the basket in Los Angeles' 111-108 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday. He missed subsequent games against the Memphis Grizzlies and Oklahoma City Thunder. Initial reports indicated that the Lakers feared the star would be forced to miss several weeks with the issue.

If his recovery takes exactly three weeks, James would miss 10 games, with half of those against teams currently at .500 or worse. In that best-case scenario, he'd return for the Lakers' March 24 matchup against the Thunder, the first of Los Angeles' final nine regular-season contests.

James won't require surgery for the injury, sources told TNT's Chris Haynes.

The NBA's all-time scoring leader is recording 29.5 points through his 20th NBA season, complementing averages of 8.4 rebounds and 6.9 assists in 36.1 minutes. The Lakers have gone 6-10 without the 38-year-old this season and 37-63 since 2018-19, his first campaign with the franchise.

During the All-Star break, James was candid about how he was treating the remainder of the Lakers' season, calling their final 23 games among "the most important" regular-season contests of his career as the club precariously sits just one game off the pace for the play-in tournament at 30-33.

Since then, Los Angeles has gone 3-1 but has been unable to climb higher than 11th in the Western Conference, something the team hasn't done all season.