![[Shelburne] Doctors told Reaves he would be out 4-6 weeks with the injury, but probably on the longer end of that timeline. The Lakers initially assumed he would be out until the conference finals, team sources told ESPN, but Reaves was determined to get back... Reaves made it back in four weeks](https://external-preview.redd.it/D-4DgwhiyGdsTCu249FIeYu7_D9n8tsaR8FIb4kpc6o.jpeg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=bbab1467e776a6904c377152789f4ddfceabaaad)
[Shelburne] Doctors told Reaves he would be out 4-6 weeks with the injury, but probably on the longer end of that timeline. The Lakers initially assumed he would be out until the conference finals, team sources told ESPN, but Reaves was determined to get back... Reaves made it back in four weeks
THERE ARE HYPERBARIC chambers and then there is the giant hyperbaric chamber at the UCLA Medical Center. Lakers star Austin Reaves spent the better part of four weeks in this enormous tube as he tried to recover from a Grade 2 oblique muscle tear he had suffered April 2 during a game in Oklahoma City.
Initially doctors told Reaves he would be out 4-6 weeks with the injury, but probably on the longer end of that timeline.
The Lakers initially assumed he would be out until the conference finals, team sources told ESPN, but Reaves was determined to get back for at least some of the Lakers' playoff run.
"I left my house every day around 7:30 in the morning to get treatment and didn't come home until about 8 at night," Reaves told ESPN. "I was going crazy trying to get back. ... I was in that hyperbaric chamber all the time."
The giant hyperbaric chamber at UCLA Health can accommodate up to 18 people and simulates the pressure of being 30 feet underwater -- roughly double the amount of pressure at the surface. That pressure promotes healing by forcing pure oxygen to dissolve into your blood at concentrations far beyond what's possible on land.
Reaves made it back in four weeks, in time for the Lakers' improbable first-round series win over the Houston Rockets.
After Game 3, Caruso was lingering in the locker room with about seven other players. That's about as rare a sight for a team with a free Saturday night in Los Angeles as you'll ever see. But Caruso had a simple explanation. "We're all going to a team dinner," he said. "The whole travelling party."
Those great Warriors teams used to plan team dinners like this on the road all the time. The Spurs did too. Not to build chemistry, but to relish in the chemistry they had already built.
Caruso, of course, has seen both sides of this equation. He was a key role player on the 2020 Lakers championship team, led by James and Anthony Davis.
"That was an older team," Caruso said. "We had guys with experience. Hall of Famers with experience. Dwight Howard, [Rajon] Rondo. Then our role players were pretty elite, too. It can work, but they didn't think it was sustainable because they broke it up."
Caruso departed that championship team in 2021 as a free agent. The Lakers chose Talen Horton-Tucker and Kendrick Nunn to fill the role he had played -- a choice that stings even more watching the way he fits so well with the Thunder.