Anthony Davis Won’t Play On Wednesday Due To A Groin Injury

Like his teammate LeBron James, Lakers forward Anthony Davis also will not play on Wednesday against the Rockets. Per ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, Davis “experienced tightness in his groin last night” when the Lakers played the Knicks.

Davis played 43 minutes on Tuesday in Los Angeles’ 101-99 overtime win over New York, scoring 20 points and pulling down six rebounds in the process. Heading into Wednesday, the Lakers are still seventh in the Western Conference — and thus in the play-in tournament — and a game back of the sixth-seeded Mavericks. Both the Lakers and Mavericks have three games left in the season and both are in action on Wednesday.

It would seem that, by resting Davis, the Lakers are choosing to play it extremely safe with him and James. And that makes sense. They will be overwhelming favorites to make it out of the play-in tournament. Even if they face the likely second-seeded Suns in the first round as the seventh seed, they might still be favorites to go out of that series assuming their two stars are healthy.

Still: It’s interesting to see them not go all-out in pursuit of the sixth seed or even the fifth seed. (The Mavericks and Blazers are both 40-29 with Portland owning the tiebreaker.) It would seem they are picking health over best seeding possible based on Davis and James both out after dealing with injuries this year.

Also worth noting is that the Rockets are the worst team in the league by record and fourth-worst by net rating. The Lakers can probably beat them even without their two best players. But with no Davis and no James, it lessens Los Angeles’ chances of getting a win it probably needs to get out of play-in tournament.

Maybe, though, that’s a deliberate choice anyway considering a 3-6 matchup would mean getting the Clippers in round one. Maybe the play-in tournament and the Suns are what the Lakers see as the less of two evils.