Luka Dončić, Jarred Vanderbilt out vs. Blazers with injury management

The Lakers will be shorthanded against the Blazers on Thursday as both Luka Dončić and Jarred Vanderbilt will be out.

After consecutive losses sandwiched on either side of the All-Star break, the Lakers will head into Portland on Thursday night shorthanded.

Both Luka Dončić and Jarred Vanderbilt will sit against the Blazers as both management returns from recent long spells on the sidelines. LeBron James is also listed as questionable.

At practice on Tuesday, head coach JJ Redick noted that Luka would not have a minutes restriction moving forward. However, he did not specify whether he would sit out back-to-backs, which looks to be the case, at least in the short term.

As for Vando, he sat out the second game of the only previous back-to-back since he returned from injury. He has remained under a minutes restriction, though, as he has only played 17 and 13 minutes in the team’s last two games.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Lakers continue to manage this moving forward. This is the first of eight back-to-backs for the remainder of the season.

Will this be commonplace throughout the remainder of the year? In the past, the team rested Anthony Davis for back-to-backs throughout the second half of the season even as the team was fighting for play-in seeding, so there is a precedent of the standings not stopping them.

However, if both players continue to improve and do not suffer any setbacks, could they advance to no longer being on any sort of restrictions and play on both ends of a back-to-back? It’ll certainly be worth monitoring moving forward.

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