INDEPENDENCE, Ohio -- LeBron James woke up Wednesday with soreness in his sprained left ankle as feared, and is effectively shut down for the rest of the preseason.

James played his first exhibition game Tuesday and scored 17 points with eight turnovers in the Cavs' 108-94 loss to the Chicago Bulls.

He had missed most of practice and the first three preseason games because of a sprained left ankle suffered Sept. 27, and all week he's warned that his ankle is not 100 percent.

Cavs coach Tyronn Lue said James would not practice Thursday or play Friday in the preseason finale Friday in Orlando, and even questioned if James would play in the season opener Oct. 17 against Boston.

"He was experiencing soreness so he won't practice tomorrow, he won't play on Friday, either," Lue said. "So, um, (LeBron is) pretty mad, pretty pissed off. But I mean, it is what it is."

J.R. Smith will start for James and Jose Calderon will move into Lue's player rotation with James out on Friday, Lue said.

As for James' availability against the Celtics next week, Lue said James "got treatment all day today, so I'm not sure if we should be concerned or not.

"But it's pretty sore today so we'll just see what happens."

It would be a fairly large upset if James were to miss the season opener, as he's never missed one in 14 seasons. He didn't speak with reporters on Wednesday, but after the game Tuesday said "I definitely wanted to test it tonight knowing that at least if I tested it tonight I have a week until the regular season started if I don't play in the game on Friday."

In essence, James' knew his ankle was sore, he wanted to see how it would feel if he played and wanted to get a game in with his new teammates with the chance to rest for nearly a week before the season starts.

A brief reminder, James averaged 26.4 points last season with career highs in rebounds (8.6 per game) and assists (8.7).

James' ankle has wrecked Lue's plans to try and create continuity on the first unit, comprised of James, Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose, Kevin Love and Jae Crowder. What that unit -- playing for the only time together this preseason -- showed against Bulls Tuesday was lackluster enough that Lue installed changes to the offense at practice Wednesday to maintain proper floor spacing and movement.

When the Cavs weren't able to run on Tuesday, the offense was stagnant and the highly decorated players wearing Cleveland uniforms looked confused and out of sync.

"Yeah and we did some different things today that they all pretty much liked," Lue said. "All got on the same page. It's a challenge when you've got a new team and you want to incorporate stuff, but you don't want to go too fast, you don't want to go too slow.

"You want to see what works. So we kind of scrapped some of the stuff we've been doing and we're going to just go in a different direction offensively with that first unit."

Only James played the same spot he holds now (when healthy) on the 2016-17 Cavs. Rose, Wade, and Crowder are new to the team and Love is starting at center for the first time.

"He's pretty easy to play with because he's going to distribute that ball and set our pace, set our tempo and we feed off him," Love said of James. "It's a luxury that we have by having him on our squad, being our leader, but do we wish we had a little more time with him in the preseason? Yes. But we have to make do with what we have."