Who doesn’t love a little emergency dental procedure?
Nothing is more fun than frantic calls to try to get into the dentist while you’re in a whole lot of pain. While Jake LaRavia may not need to do that part as an NBA player, he did experience a bit of an emergency procedure.
During Sunday’s game against the Sixers, LaRavia collided with Gabe Vincent during the first quarter. He immediately covered his face and walked to the corner of the court while Philly in-bounded and headed the other way. After
a foul from the Lakers, LaRavia would sprint off the court and straight to the locker room.
While he returned to the game, he shared a picture postgame of the state of his tooth and, spoiler, it wasn’t great!
Perhaps not shockingly, LaRavia had to have a root canal after that, which he discussed at practice on Friday.
As a semi-recent recipient of a root canal, playing a game days later is wild. I was able to cover a game a few days after the procedure but I sure as hell didn’t want to go out on a court to play a game.
But, honestly, we’re burying the lede here. The bigger takeaway from this is…
Do the Lakers have their own “apple time, apple time” guy now?
For those who don’t know, one of the infamous Kawhi Leonard stories involved him bringing a back of apples to a team dinner, saying “apple time, apple time” when asked what he was doing and then eating 12 of them with a knife and fork.
There basically isn’t one part of that story that is actually believable, so it’s not a surprise Kawhi denied it to be true. But things aren’t always as they seem with Kawhi, so can we really take him at his word?
Circling back to LaRavia, if I had a root canal on my front tooth as an NBA player, I think I’d permanently wear a mouth guard moving forward while also living in constant fear that it was going to be knocked loose again. Maybe this says more about me and dentists than anything else though.
Fortunately, LaRavia looks to be on the mend and no worse for the wear, save for a little less apple time.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
