Why the Lakers were cautious with Austin Reaves’ calf injury
The Lakers were cautious with Austin Reaves calf soreness ahead of an important stretch of games in March.
Lakers guard Austin Reaves has been relatively healthy this season, even as he’s taken on a greater role with the team with more on-ball duties.
However, just nine minutes into the Lakers’ eventual victory over the crosstown Clippers last Friday, Austin left the game with calf soreness and was ruled out.
Following the game, head coach JJ Redick said that Reaves would be undergoing an MRI on the calf. Redick also mentioned that this was a nagging issue for Austin, but he didn’t believe it to be serious.
JJ’s intuition turned out to be correct as the imaging reportedly found no overt damage. The Lakers taking this day-to-day approach makes sense for multiple reasons.
Firstly, with no overt strain of the calf and just lingering soreness, Reaves doesn’t have to wait for tissue to heal but rather it depends more so on how the calf is responding to treatment and basketball activities.
Secondly, the calf area is intricate and often medically referred to as the calf complex.
These muscles and tendons then have their own specific sub-categories that are higher or lower risk. For example, the underlying soleus has the muscle tissue and also what’s called an aponeurosis, which is further divided into more specific compartments.
These specifics are very important. So, depending on where Austin’s calf soreness is, that can influence how aggressive or conservative the Lakers’ medical staff wants to be.
Thirdly, muscular soreness is often a sign of overload in that muscle and can be a precursor to overt injury. With the calf under constant load during basketball activities — whether it’s running, jumping, cutting, or decelerating — it again makes sense to take the proactive approach.
You want to deal with the soreness now rather than have it potentially turn into a bigger problem, particularly for a player like Reaves, who is asked to do a lot, and for a team like the Lakers, who are now expecting to make a deep playoff run.
Last, but not least, is the schedule. Austin missed a Clippers game and a Pelicans game. The former is much tougher than the latter but overall, not the cream of the crop.
However, the Lakers’ schedule is slated to get tougher with games coming up against the Knicks, Celtics and Nuggets. Those games will not only require the Lakers to be closer to full strength but also come with a higher level of intensity. Therefore, it makes sense to take the time to get Reaves right so he can have the impact you want him to have in those tougher games.
For now, Reaves will continue to go through his daily treatment and basketball activities to see how the calf responds. Once he does return, which looks set to be on Thursday, another key hurdle will be how his body responds to those in-game minutes.
As always, I’ll keep you updated as we learn more.
Dr. Rajpal Brar, DPT has a doctorate in physical therapy from Northern Arizona University, and runs his own in-person and online sports medicine and performance business, 3CB Performance, in West LA and Valencia, CA and combines his movement expertise and fitness training background to rehab & train elite athletes.
He also works at a hospital — giving him experience with patients in the immediate healthcare setting and neurological patients (post stroke, post brain injury) — and has been practicing for over 5 years. Brar is additionally training at UCLA’s mindful awareness research center (MARC), has a background in youth basketball coaching and analyzes the Lakers from a medical and skills perspective for Silver Screen and Roll and on his own YouTube Channel. You can follow him on Twitter at @3cbPerformance, on Instagram, and on his weekly Substack 3CB Quick HIITS