RampUp

LeBron James did not participate in the Lakers’ first day of training camp Tuesday because of “nerve irritation in the glute.”

James’ teammates Marcus Smart, Gabe Vincent and Adou Thiero were “under either return to play protocols or modified protocols” during the team’s first sessions.

James is entering his NBA-record 23rd season and the goal is to ramp him up to be ready for the regular-season opener Oct. 21 against the Golden State Warriors at Crypto.com Arena.

“Yeah, I think it’s probably a little bit longer of a ramp-up leading into opening night for him just obviously in Year 23, it’s uncharted territory here,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “So, I felt, and in talking with performance and in talking with Mike (Mancias, James’ personal trainer) and LeBron, like probably did too much last year in camp, which was great for me as a first-year head coach to get buy-in from him.

“But it’ll be a slower process with him leading into the first game. He’s obviously got 22 years so far of wear and tear on the body and he’s dealing with a little bit of nerve irritation in the glute. So, we’re just playing the long game with LeBron.”

Redick said Vincent was “just modified” and the hope is that he’ll play in the preseason game Friday against the Phoenix Suns in Palm Desert.

“He should be good to go live by the end of the week and we expect him to be able to play Friday,” Redick said. “And that’s just, again, the management of, as we did last year as well.”

Smart could be seen shooting after practice, but the Lakers are taking it slow with him as well.

“Marcus, he’s dealing with a little bit of Achilles’ tendinopathy,” Redick said. “He’s been in a slow ramp-up. He was a modified participant, nothing live today. He’s expected to be fine by the end of the week.”

Thiero said Monday that he still has some “swelling” in his left knee that kept him out playing in the summer league in Las Vegas and has slowed his time on the court since then.

Redick said Thiero was running, cutting and jumping with coaches, but that they will take it slow with him.

“It’s really about playing the long game with him,” Redick said. “We look at this year as a developmental year and there’s no reason for us to push his body and create a long-term problem. His knee is in a really good spot. We just want to be really careful.”

Redick said, “that’s the goal,” when asked if James will be ready to play in the season opener.

James, 40, has played 71,104 minutes over his career, including the playoffs.

“You’ll hear me use this a lot: it is unchartered territory,” Redick said. “I don’t think there’s a proven way to handle someone who has this much mileage, this many minutes, been asked to do so many things on both ends of the court. We asked a lot of him last year, we asked a lot of him to start the year in camp, so it’s just working as a partnership and trying to figure it out.”

Even with James not practicing, Austin Reaves said it won’t be a problem for the three leaders to find ways to make it smooth for their teammates.

Along with James and Luka Doncic, Reaves is viewed as one of the Lakers’ stars and he says James always is engaged even when he doesn’t practice.

“Yeah, just communication,” Reaves said. “To have good dialogue back and forth, what everybody likes, what we can do to be successful. With him being one of the highest IQ guys to ever play the game, I think it’s not that hard to piece it in even if he’s not out there right now, He sees the game just as good as anybody that has ever played the game. So, like I said, it’s having conversations, dialogue back and forth what we feel like we can do to help our team be successful is going to be, I think, key.”

The National Guard members deployed to the protests in Los Angeles have been trained to temporarily detain civilians if necessary, according to the troops’ commander.

Nevertheless, as of Wednesday, Major General Scott Sherman clarified that no troops have detained any protester, despite an earlier statement that suggested otherwise.

The National Guard’s deployment came in response to protests against United States President Donald Trump’s push for mass deportation, which recently targeted hardware stores and other businesses in southern California, prompting outrage.

Protesters flooded the streets starting on Friday to denounce the immigration raids. Trump responded by sending the military to the scene, denouncing what he considered “third-world lawlessness” in the city. Since then, however, the protests have spread beyond Los Angeles, to major cities in other parts of the country.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Sherman said authorities “are expecting a ramp-up” in national unrest in the coming days.

“I’m focused right here in LA, what’s going on right here. But you know, I think we’re very concerned,” he said.

Sherman explained that 500 of the more than 4,000 National Guard members deployed to Los Angeles have also received training to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the immigration raids.

His remarks came as condemnation continues to grow over Trump’s decision to deploy the National Guard to California without the permission of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

Since the National Guard arrived on Sunday, Trump has sent nearly 700 Marines to the Los Angeles area as well.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass on Wednesday accused the Trump administration of using the military to escalate tensions in the city, where the protests first broke out on Friday.

“We started off by hearing the administration wanted to go after violent felons, gang members, drug dealers,” Bass said of Trump’s deportation push.

“But when you raid Home Depots and workplaces, when you tear parents and children apart, and when you run armoured caravans through our streets, you are not trying to keep anyone safe. You’re trying to cause fear and panic.

“And when you start deploying federalised troops on the heels of these raids, it is a drastic and chaotic escalation and completely unnecessary.”

Newsom, meanwhile, filed an emergency motion on Tuesday to block Trump from expanding the military presence in Los Angeles beyond federal buildings, with a court hearing set for Thursday.

Bass and Governor Newsom have maintained that local law enforcement were able to handle the situation before Trump intervened and that the military presence prompted more unrest, not less.

Speaking alongside 30 other California mayors and city leaders on Wednesday, Bass questioned if Trump was seeing how far he could push his presidential power.

“This was provoked by the White House. The reason why? We don’t know,” said Bass.

“I posit that maybe we are part of a national experiment to determine how far the federal government can go in reaching in and taking over power from a governor, power from a local jurisdiction.”

So far, Trump has maintained that the soldiers’ deployment was needed to protect federal property and agents — and was therefore within his executive authority.

He has not yet invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807, a federal law that would suspend prohibitions against the military directly taking part in domestic law enforcement. Until that happens, the troops are generally barred from making arrests.

Speaking during a news conference on Wednesday, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt repeated Trump’s claims that sending in the National Guard and Marines had prevented Los Angeles from spiralling into chaos.

She charged that Bass and Newsom had “shamefully failed to meet their sworn obligations to their citizens”.

“They’re attempting to use a violent mob as a weapon against their own constituents to prevent the enforcement of immigration law,” she said. “This is deeply un-American and morally reprehensible.”

Questions about ‘migrant invasion’

Amid the unrest, the Trump administration has pledged to continue its aggressive immigration raids, with officials last month setting a quota of 3,000 arrests a day.

Advocates say the pressure has motivated ICE agents to take increasingly drastic measures, targeting anyone in the country without documentation, even those who have not committed criminal offences and those with deep community ties.

Reporting from Los Angeles, Al Jazeera’s Phil Lavelle said authorities have been conducting blanket raids at Home Depot hardware stores, where undocumented day labourers often gather to find work.

At one location, labourers told Lavelle “that they will continue to come even though they know that these stores are being targeted – even though they know that they will be targets – because quite simply, they’ve got to work”.

“These are people who are communicating by WhatsApp and other methods,” Lavelle added. “If anybody is seen in the area who looks like an ICE agent, straight away, there are reports so that people know that they have to leave.”

So far, 61 Mexican nationals had been detained in Los Angeles during the recent raids, according to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that the influx of migrants into the US constitutes an “invasion”, which in turn necessitates emergency actions.

Speaking on Tuesday from the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, he called the protests in California a “full-blown assault on peace, on public order and our national sovereignty carried out by rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion of our country”.

But during a congressional hearing on Wednesday, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine was asked whether he believed the US was being invaded by a foreign power. His answer appeared to contradict Trump.

“I don’t see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading, but I’ll be mindful of the fact that there have been some border issues,” he said.