The Los Angeles Lakers picked up their fourth-straight win on Saturday, coming up with an overtime victory on the road against the Dallas Mavericks.
It was the Lakers’ first win over Dallas since 2013, but unfortunately, Brandon Ingram did not finish the game. Ingram suffered a sprained left ankle in the first quarter and after re-taping it, tried to return in the second.
He played three minutes before returning to the locker room for a second time, which prompted the Lakers to rule him out for the remainder of the game. The injury put a damper on what was an excellent start for Ingram who had four points, six rebounds, and five assists before being kept out.
After the game, Walton gave an update on Ingram, calling him day-to-day for the time being, via the team’s Twitter account:
“Mild ankle sprain, it’s day-to-day. I think they took him back to get some X-rays, I don’t know that part of it. But he’s day-to-day right now.”
The injury did not take away from Ingram’s excellent play beforehand, of which Walton was extremely satisfied:
“Brandon did have a great start. And again, it was him just making plays. He had five assists in the short amount of time he played, his jumper looked good.”
Ingram said X-rays on his ankle came back negative and he plans to test the ankle and hopes to play Monday when the Lakers face the Memphis Grizzlies, as seen on Spectrum SportsNet:
“It’s not that bad. Well, I couldn’t really push off it after I went out of the game. … I’ll go in tomorrow and see how I feel running up and down the floor. Like I said, I hate being out. I’m not sure how long I’ll be out, or if I will be out.”
Even when accounting for this injury-shortened game, Ingram is averaging 17.3 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 3.3 assists on 53.3 percent shooting and 46.7 percent from 3-point range during the month of January.
Losing him for any amount of time would be a huge blow to the Lakers as he has been their best all-around player and the team has finally been back at full strength. The improvements he is making to his game are evident and that continued growth will be huge to the Lakers success in both the short and long term.
Josh Hart started the second half in place of Ingram.
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