Spurs Key Player Unexpectedly Sidelined Due To A Sprained Spin Injury…

Due to a sprained right ankle, San Antonio Spurs top pick Victor Wembanyama was unexpectedly forced to miss the team’s game against the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday. The incident happened when he tripped over a ball boy’s foot in his pregame warm-up.

The ball boy was on the baseline as Wembanyama completed a driving layup over a Spurs assistant coach, which led to the 7-foot-4 rookie rolling his ankle. Although Wembanyama had his ankle retaped, the Spurs opted to keep him out of the game following further assessment.

After the team’s 144-119 loss, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich remarked that he would have played Wembanyama if it had been a playoff game. However, he preferred to be cautious, especially since it was the same ankle that recently had a time limitation placed on it due to soreness.

“If it was a playoff game, I probably would’ve played him,” Popovich said. “He’s not happy about it, but I would rather err on the conservative side since it’s the same ankle that you just got a time limitation on. But just a freak, freak accident before the game.”

Wembanyama, who missed Tuesday’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks due to ankle soreness, had played 22 minutes in Thursday’s game against the Chicago Bulls. He was again expected to be on a minutes restriction.

Despite finding it hard to believe even after seeing it on film, Popovich, who has 28 years of coaching experience in San Antonio, said he had never seen an injury occur in such a way.

“You witness it in the movie, and it’s unbelievable,” Popovich remarked.

Wembanyama, the first overall pick in the draft, has finished the season with averages of 18.5 points, 10.7 rebounds, and 3.0 blocks per game. Having played in all but three games, he has been an important member of the Spurs squad.

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The San Antonio matchup has come at the right time for the Utah Jazz’s revival…

With their recent ascent from the bottom of the NBA’s Western Conference, the Utah Jazz are once again in the running for the postseason. After going 5-2 in their previous seven games, the Jazz are currently three games behind the Golden State Warriors for the final play-in position. The lineup is finally beginning to resemble a respectable starting five as the team gets healthier. So it’s almost perfect that the San Antonio Spurs are the next team on the schedule, out of all the teams the Jazz are about to play.

The Spurs are truly terrible, just 4-24, and are 1-9 in their last 10. Had it not been for the Detroit Pistons and their 26-game losing streak, it’d be very clear that the Spurs are the worst team in the NBA. That’s exactly the kind of team the Jazz need to face to help get themselves situated.

The Jazz are a team that could very easily right the wrongs of an early season collapse by putting together a few key wins, and getting back into the playoff hunt, but they’ve got to take advantage of teams like the Spurs because the easy teams are not going to be around forever.

Following the Spurs game, seven of the Jazz’s next eight games will be against the New Orleans Pelicans, Miami Heat, Dallas Mavericks, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers, Milwaukee Bucks, and Denver Nuggets. With 20 wins already, four of those teams will be extremely difficult opponents for the Jazz.

This run of games will also be crucial in determining whether the Jazz have assembled a strong enough starting lineup and rotation to pursue a postseason berth this season. This brief period of recent success won’t matter too much if they lose all seven of those games. Because of this, it’s critical that the Jazz defeat the Spurs, since these kinds of victories won’t happen very often over the next few weeks.