Los Angeles Lakers center Anthony Davis spoke to reporters on Friday — before his team's matchup with the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena — for the first time since leaving the team's Dec. 16 win vs. the Denver Nuggets with a right foot injury.

Davis has missed all seven games since and remains out indefinitely. After a week of examinations and meetings with various doctors, the Lakers eventually diagnosed AD with a stress injury in his right foot.

Fortunately, both AD and Lakers head coach Darvin Ham sounded optimistic when discussing his recovery process.

Ham, who addressed the media first, said AD is trending in the right direction in terms of ramping up his rehab.

“The biggest thing is, his pain has just about dissipated,” Ham explained.

Davis, meanwhile, revealed that he had a bone spur in his foot that may have been there since his lone season at the University of Kentucky (2011-12). He clarified that the bone spur fractured off his navicular, where there is also a stress reaction. That all sounds scary, but he's generally hopeful about how it's healed so far. As he noted, the pain level is the most important determinant in his return timeline.

“It’s healing pretty quickly,” Davis said. “So when we get back to L.A., we’ll do another image of the foot, and see how far it’s healed since the last time I did it, which was the 22nd or the 23rd. And it’s really just about pain. The pain is still there, I still feel it a little bit, not as much as I did before. More like a two (out of 10), trending down to one. I’ve been lifting, and lifting is fine. Everything I do in the weight room is fine.

“It was bothering me; it was very painful,” Davis added. “The doctor told me that I had a fracture and a bone spur in my foot. At that moment, and maybe leading into the next day, it was tough for me mentally just because of the fact that coming off last year with the injuries and coming out and having a mindset of getting back to who I want to be as a player, in that mold, and for something like this to happen was tough mentally.”

Davis has missed large chunks of the previous two seasons with lower leg injuries.

“After that, it was just figuring out the next steps to getting back on the floor. The next day, they told me I had a stress reaction in my navicular bone, so I was kinda dealing with two problems. It comes from that piece, the bone spur continuously hitting the navicular bone, causing the stress on it, which is more alarming for me than the bone spur. The stress reaction (can lead to) a stress fracture, and that’s a whole different ballgame.”

The Lakers are 2-5 since Davis went down with the foot injury and 3-7 overall without their All-Star big in 2022-23. Their defense has fallen off a cliff without AD manning the middle.

Los Angeles sits at 14-21 entering Friday, good for 13th place in the Western Conference standings.

Davis is averaging 27.4 points, 12.1 rebounds, 1.3 steals, and 2.1 blocks in 25 games this season.