Ziaire Williams will sit out for the third straight game on Sunday night, with the Lakers keeping the forward on the shelf as they face the Toronto Raptors while he works through a foot injury.
Before tipoff, head coach JJ Redick said the team is taking a measured approach with Williams’ return, especially with the schedule tightening up.
“The images have been clean. I would describe it as soreness that just pops up in the morning, and he’s feeling a lot better,” Redick said during his pregame press conference before the Raptors game. “I think just being, again, cautious with the back-to-back.”
Williams had already dealt with the same foot issue during the preseason, when it kept him out of three of the Lakers’ five exhibition games. He was available for opening night, though, and quickly became one of the team’s steadier pieces over the first four games.
The Lakers signed the No. 10 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft in free agency this offseason on a minimum contract, with the front office looking to add more youth and athleticism on the wing. That move paid off early. Williams had started at the four from the jump and was logging a little over 28 minutes per game before the injury interrupted his run.
Through those first four contests, the former Stanford standout was putting up career-best numbers across the board: 11.3 points, 3.0 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.5 steals per game. He was also shooting 57.1 percent from the field, 46.7 percent from 3-point range and 85.7 percent from the free-throw line.
Redick said Williams has been asked to handle a lot on both ends, including primary point-of-attack defense and work on the glass. He didn’t tie the injury directly to that workload, but he did point to the overall grind of the modern game.
“I just think the game is just physical right now. You could say like, a guy is picking up full-court, and that’s a physical toll on him.
But then he’s probably also asking to crash every single time,” Redick said. “And then he’s got to, on the other end, pick up full-court, guard multiple actions and then box out all the crashers on their team.
The whole game is just physicality right now, that’s all it is. There’s no, ‘I can hide tonight and not be physical.’
I think it’s just one element of what this game is right now.”
Williams’ next chance to return comes Monday, Nov. 2, when the Lakers host the Miami Heat on the second night of a back-to-back.
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