Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James will miss Friday night's game against the Indiana Pacers after suffering a left elbow injury in Thursday night's 120-113 loss to the Denver Nuggets, the team announced.
In the fourth quarter of Thursday's game in Denver, James suffered a hard fall on a layup attempt. LeBron's left elbow landed awkwardly and he lay on the ground writhing in pain before the ball went out of bounds and the game was stopped.
The team says LeBron James (left elbow injury) has been listed out for tonight's game against the Pacers.
LeBron suffered an injury after a hard fall in the final minutes of Lakers-Nuggets game on Thursday night.pic.twitter.com/FILh742gJY
- ClutchPoints (@clutchpoints) 6 March 2026
After being helped up and walking to the team's bench, James was still grimacing and holding his elbows in apparent discomfort. Although James returned to the game after being immediately examined on the bench, his elbow was badly wrapped in ice during the team's postgame media session in the locker room.
James said he would be dealing with the injury "day by day" and that it was a "funny situation, but it's more serious."
The Lakers did not provide any official update on his elbow specifically and did not say whether James had further testing for his injury. The good news is that his injury is being listed as an "elbow injury" and he is not expected to miss any length of time.
His next chance to play will be on Sunday at home against the New York Knicks.
Although the Lakers lost in Denver on Thursday night, LeBron had 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting and eight assists. With his third shot of the contest, James recorded the 15,838th shot of his career, passing Kareem–Abdul-Jabbar (15,837) for the most field goals made in NBA regular season history.
"At the end of the day, just being added, and having my name mentioned with some of the greatest guys to ever play this game, it's always humbling and pretty cool," James said after the game. "I grew up watching, reading, analyzing a lot of great guys. If I ever got away from the NBA, I wanted to put myself in a position to do something like them and put my name up there with some of the greats."
"So that's awesome."
LeBron is also closing in on another record, as once he plays six more games this season, he will surpass Robert Parish (1,611) for most games played in league history.
In 44 games this season, LeBron is averaging 21.4 points, 7.0 assists and 5.6 rebounds per game, while shooting 50.4 percent from the floor. Friday night will be James' 19th missed game of the season, his most since missing 27 games during the 2022-23 season in Los Angeles.
