Los Angeles Lakers rookie guard Josh Hart will undergo surgery Friday on a fractured metacarpal bone in his left hand.
The Lakers said there was no timetable for the rookie's recovery, but head coach Luke Walton did not rule him out for the season. The Lakers have 21 more regular-season games after Thursday night's game in Miami.
"It's one of those things, obviously there's zero rush to bring him back," Walton said Thursday. "But if he's healthy and ready to play and we've got a couple of weeks left [in the season], then yeah we'll get him back on the court."
Rookie point guard Lonzo Ball returned to the starting lineup after coming off the bench in his previous two games back from a sprained left MCL injury.
"We're going to have different guys step up, different guys play new roles, bigger roles," Walton said. "And we got to kind of figure it out still as we go, because there's going to be lineups out there that haven't played together much. Like I said earlier, we'll probably get [Kyle] Kuzma at some 3 as well as 4 now, so guys just got to be ready to play."
Hart, who suffered the injury to his non-shooting hand in practice Wednesday, is averaging 6.6 points. He started 20 games this season and had four of his six double-doubles in the previous 10 games as a starter.
"[Hart is] very important," Ball said Wednesday. "Double-double pretty much every time he steps out there, one of our best defenders and also rebounds a lot. He helps a lot, especially defensively."
