LOS ANGELES — LeBron James’ recovery from a foot injury has continued to progress, the latest update saying he has begun on-court activity.
The Lakers’ star and league’s all-time leading scorer hasn’t played since Feb. 26 when he injured his right foot in the second half of the Lakers’ eventual win over Dallas. James hit the floor and said he heard “a pop,” but he was able to finish the game.
Since, James spent significant time in a protective boot on the foot before recently shooting on the court for the first time since the injury.
The team said Thursday that James has begun “a gradual basketball movement progression” but that there’s no timetable for a return.
Earlier this week, Coach Darvin Ham said the Lakers “anticipate him coming back at some point.”
The hope remains that James will be able to return before the end of the regular season, with the Lakers’ final three regular-season games being played in Los Angeles.
Following their win against Phoenix on Wednesday night, the Lakers are tied for ninth in the West and 1 1/2 games behind the Warriors for sixth place.
KINGS: The Sacramento Kings might just be riding the beam all the way to the NBA playoffs.
The resurgent Kings are on the verge of ending the longest postseason drought in league history, with first-year coach Mike Brown employing a fast-paced offense led by the dynamic duo of De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis to put Sacramento in first place in the Pacific Division.
“It’s a great feeling. It’s great because it’s my first time,” Fox said of being in the playoff hunt. “This is something we want to make annual. We want to be contending for a title. … It’s great for the city and organization. We still want bigger things for ourselves.”
The Kings (43-29) are in third place in the Western Conference and might be able to clinch the franchise’s first playoff berth since 2006 during the final three games of a four-game homestand that ends Monday night against Minnesota.
The 16 seasons without a playoff berth are the longest in NBA history and the longest active postseason drought among any team in the NBA, NFL, NHL or Major League Baseball.
“I do feel that that group believes in themselves, not just because I’m telling them they’re good, but because they’ve actually gone out and proven it time after time after time, whether it’s individually in certain situations or collectively as a team,” Brown said. “When you have a team that believes, they can be dangerous. You’ve got a connected team that believes, they can be a very dangerous team and that’s what our group is right now.”
The Kings are also one of the best feel-good stories of the NBA this season with an entertaining style of basketball that leads the league in scoring at 120.9 points per game for the highest mark in the league since 1983-84.
Each win at home is punctuated with the lighting of the beam — a beam of light from purple lasers atop the Golden 1 Center — and fans have even chanted for the beam at road games around the country.
“There’s like a playoff atmosphere every night,” swingman Kevin Huerter, one of the key offseason acquisitions, said after a recent home win. “The only thing that’s missing is handing out the T-shirts and maybe some towels, whatever they’re doing for the playoffs. But it really is this every night.”
The Kings have been one of the most success-starved franchises since moving to Sacramento in 1985. They had a losing record in each of their first 14 seasons in California, winning just one playoff game.
That all changed in 1999 when GM Geoff Petrie and Coach Rick Adelman built a winner around players like Chris Webber, Vlade Divac and Peja Stojakovic that played an entertaining style in a grind-it-out era that nearly delivered a championship.
The Kings posted eight straight winning records and playoff berths under Adelman, but lost a heartbreaking seven-game series to the Los Angeles Lakers in 2002 and then saw their title hopes derailed the following year when Webber went down with a serious knee injury in the second round of the playoffs.
Adelman kept the team competitive through 2006 but was let go following a second straight first-round playoff exit.
Then the dark era began with 16 straight losing seasons under 11 coaches, an ownership change and fears that the city would lose its only major pro team to Seattle.
Vivek Ranadive bought the team from the Maloof family in 2013 and kept the team in Sacramento by building a downtown arena, but there was no on-court success until this year.
The Kings traded away star DeMarcus Cousins and botched several high draft picks. But they have been revived following last year’s trade with Indiana that sent promising guard Tyrese Haliburton to Indiana for a playmaking big man in Sabonis and the decision to hire Brown as coach.
Sabonis proved to be the perfect piece to team with the speedy Fox, giving Sacramento a dynamic duo.
Fox is averaging 25.4 points per game and has been the best clutch scorer in the league this season, scoring double figures in the fourth quarter a league-high 25 times.
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