LeBron James suffered a strained groin in the third quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers win over the Golden State Warriors on Christmas Day. When a player is injured, it is important to get him back to the locker room as quickly as possible so that the medical staff can look at him. However, in the case of the Golden State Warriors staff, they forced LeBron to take an unnecessarily long route to the locker room to get his treatment, something that James pointed out after the game.

LeBron talks Warriors treatment

LeBron James was lucky that he didn't tear his groin.

He said that he felt a pop and tried to stretch it out but nothing helped ease the pain. At that point, it was important for the Los Angeles Lakers star to get to the locker room so that medical personnel could look at the injury and determine if he needed immediate treatment.

James walked to the locker room on his own, but he was disappointed in the path the Golden State Warriors staff forced him to walk. LeBron said that they forced him to take a "needlessly longer route" to the locker room after his injury. The fact that he was walking with an injured groin makes this a very unprofessional and unsportsmanlike moment for the Warriors employee.

It turned out that LeBron James needed an MRI on Wednesday to determine the severity of the injury -- one that could have been made much worse the longer that he was forced to walk on it.

Whether it was a member of the Golden State Warriors team or a rival on the Los Angeles Lakers, an injured star needs to be treated equally for their own safety.

LeBron and his injury

The good news is that the unsportsmanlike unprofessionalism by the Golden State Warriors employee did not cause the LeBron James injury to get worse.

However, LeBron will still miss a few games to recover from the injured groin. The bad news is that those games are against the Sacramento Kings (18-15), Los Angeles Clippers (19-14) and then the Kings again.

The Los Angeles Lakers are 20-14 and are only half a game ahead of the Clippers and 1.5 games ahead of the Kings. If the Lakers struggle without LeBron James, both teams could jump them in the rankings.

However, with that said, players like Kyle Kuzma, Josh Hart, Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball all stepped up when LeBron went down and beat the Golden State Warriors anyway on Christmas Day.

The Los Angeles Lakers need to get LeBron James back as soon as possible but they are lucky the Golden State Warriors actions did not make his injury worse.
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