Lakers News: Mo Bamba May Miss Rest Of Regular Season With Injury

LA's new 3-and-D reserve center will miss some time.

Another day, another major Los Angeles Lakers player injury.

Upon being assessed by the Lakers' medical staff, the team has diagnosed 3-and-D backup center Mo Bamba with a high left ankle sprain, per Mike Trudell of Lakers.com. He is set to be reappraised in a month. 

That's not a guarantee he will be able to play at that point, and given that there are only five weeks left in the 2022-23 NBA regular season, there's a decent chance Bamba is done for the year -- or at least, until the play-in tournament.

The seven-footer played sparingly across his seven healthy games with the Lakers. He posted averages of 4.4 points on .417/.333/.545 shooting splits, 5.3 rebounds, 0.6 blocks and 0.6 assists across 11.6 minutes a night.

Bamba suffered the injury during LA's 113-105 win over the Golden State Warriors on Sunday, and had already been deactivated for the team's latest improbable win, a 112-103 victory over a Memphis Grizzlies club that, even without Ja Morant or Steven Adams, still proved to be no pushovers. 

Bamba had been in and out of head coach Darvin Ham's lineups since arriving in LA, as Ham appeared to generally prioritize reserve power forward/center Wenyen Gabriel ahead of Bamba. Gabriel is not a shooter, but hustles mightily on defense. Bamba, now on his second team after having been first selected with the sixth pick in the 2018 draft out of the University of Texas at Austin, may somewhat be the victim of high expectations. His price tag for next season, worth $10.3 million, is non-guaranteed until June. Now, LA will barely have any time to evaluate him before it needs to make a decision on his future.

He was certainly worth a flyer, and theoretically is a solid fit for what the team needs out of its frontcourt depth (rim defense and jump-shooting), but he's had health problems before, and the last thing LA needs is yet another player it can't count on.

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