The Los Angeles Lakers announced that after being evaluated by team doctors, second-year guard Max Christie is considered day-to-day moving forward with a right ankle sprain.
Despite being day-to-day though, Lakers head coach Darvin Ham expects Christie to be out at least through the All-Star break, which makes sense with only two games remaining this week.
“Max is doing well. He’s day-to-day so just keeping track of him. He’s trending in a position direction… I doubt we see him [before the All-Star break],” Ham said after practice on Monday.
Christie suffered the injury when he rolled his ankle while driving to the basket and getting fouled at the end of the first half of Thursday night’s game against the Denver Nuggets.
The 21-year-old was in immediate pain as he limped back to the locker room before eventually being ruled out for the remainder of the night. Christie then sat out Friday night’s victory over the New Orleans Pelicans, which wasn’t a surprise given the quick turnaround.
Ham said on Friday that Christie underwent an MRI and would continue to be evaluated by team doctors at the arena. After getting looked at, Christie appeared to avoid serious injury, which is obviously great news for a Lakers team that has been bitten by the injury bug all season.
The Lakers have already been without Jarred Vanderbilt, Cam Reddish and Gabe Vincent in recent weeks, so it is good to see that Christie will not miss much more time, if any at all.
There’s never a good time for injuries, but this isn’t the worst as the Lakers have three days off before returning to the court on Tuesday. They then play two more games before the All-Star break, so Christie should have plenty of time to rest that ankle and be back at 100% coming out of the break.
Although it’s just his second NBA season, Christie has started to get more comfortable with the Lakers on both sides of the ball. In 43 games (seven starts), Christie has played 17.2 minutes per game and averaged 5.0 points, 2.6 rebounds and 1.0 assists while shooting 35.6% from 3-point range.
While the recent addition of Spencer Dinwiddie could cut into some of Christie’s minutes once both are able to play, it is still good to have the latter healthy and available to bring energy to the Lakers whenever Ham calls his number.
Max Christie knew trade rumors were out of his control
The trade deadline recently came and went and Christie is still with the Lakers despite his name being in various rumors.
While that process was going on, Christie said that he didn’t pay attention to all the rumors since they were out of his control.
“Yeah, that’s out of my control,” Christie said. “I’ve said it a lot of times throughout the year, just show up and be a pro. That’s all I can do. Be a professional, show up on time, work as hard as I can. Like I said, the trade rumors are out of my control so there’s nothing I can do about that and there’s no point in worrying about it if I can’t do anything about it. So me just showing up and being the best version of myself, being the best version I can for this team, or if I end up on another team then whatever team that is. Right now it’s the Lakers so all I have to do is be the best version of myself and try to be the best player I can be.”
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