Lakers: Illness Sidelines Wayne Ellington For Rockets Game

Yet another Lakers guard is unavailable.

Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard Wayne Ellington will be sidelined tonight for the Lakers' game against the Houston Rockets, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN. McMenamin notes that Ellington will miss tonight's fairly winnable contest with an illness. But don't worry, it's not COVID-19, and he did not travel with the club.

In recent weeks Ellington has fallen to the periphery of the club's rotation. The 6'4" vet had been expected to compete for a starting slot with the team after inking a veteran's minimum contract over the summer. With Ellington out, acting head coach David Fizdale will get to experiment a bit more with other perimeter rotation options beyond the disappointing Ellington.

Along the perimeter, the Lakers are also missing wings Kent Bazemore, Kendrick Nunn and Austin Reaves, plus point guard Rajon Rondo. Nunn continues to grapple with a bone bruise that has kept him out all year to this point, while the other three players remain in the NBA's coronavirus health and safety protocols.

The 34-year-old Ellington, a 13-year veteran out of the University of North Carolina, is averaging 6.4 points and 1.8 rebounds across 26 games with LA. While he's connecting on a poor 37.8% of his overall field goals, that is due in part to the fact that a vast majority of Ellington's shot diet (5.2 of his 5.7 field goal looks) are three-pointers. He is connecting on 36.8% of those 5.2 long-range attempts.

Ellington's erratic recent play (he has not scored in double digits since November 24th) had set his minutes tallies on the decline, until the Lakers' slew of COVID-19 absences compelled head coach Frank Vogel and later Fizdale to play him major minutes starting on December 15th. That trend, too, appeared to be over prior to this illness news. Ellington notched just 13:41 minutes of action, scoring just three points on 1-of-4 shooting, in LA's most recent game, a 122-115 loss to the Brooklyn Nets.