An MRI conducted Friday on Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen revealed that he re-aggravated an impingement to his right shoulder, the team announced (via Twitter). Doctors plan to reevaluate Markkanen in two weeks, which effectively ends his season.
Markkanen was feeling discomfort in the shoulder after playing 42 minutes in Wednesday’s game against San Antonio, the Jazz added. He missed more than two weeks earlier this month due to a right quadriceps contusion.
Injuries limited Markkanen to just 55 games in his second year with Utah. His numbers were down slightly from his All-Star season in 2022/23, but he still averaged 23.2 points, 8.2 rebounds and 2.0 assists in 33.1 minutes per night while shooting 48% from the field and 39.9% from three-point range.
Markkanen’s $18MM contract for next season currently carries just a partial guarantee of $6MM and won’t officially become fully guaranteed until two days before the start of this year’s moratorium. That figures to become a moot point, though, as Markkanen is expected to pursue a renegotiation and long-term extension with the Jazz this summer.
Quote: “Injuries limited Markkanen to just 55 games in his second year with Utah.”
Should read: “The Jazz front office’s tanking limited Markkanen to just 55 games in his second year with Utah.”
They played Markkanen 42 minutes against the Spurs four days ago and he seemed fine. I guess Ryan Smith and his stooge Danny Boy have gotten bored with the stale phantom “injury management” lie.
Markkanen would be an unsalvageable idiot should he even entertain the idea of signing an extension with that SLC garbage franchise. He’d literally tank his career.
He also missed almost two weeks for “right quad contusion” which was followed by “quad contusion injury management” which limited him to playing every other game. “Quad contusion injury management” is just ridiculous, has anyone ever missed any NBA games for any kind of contusion injury management before or had to miss multiple games after already sitting out two weeks for any contusion related injury?? Tanking limited him to 55 games, he missed what was it 8 games before New Years and couple games here-and-there so I reckon he would have been able to play 67-69 games if needed.
Markkanen missed a total of 10 games out of 52 (19.2 %) before the 2024 trade deadline and 17 out of 30 games (56.6%) since February 8th.
In 2023, it was 5 out of 51 (9.8%) before and 11 out of 31 (35.5%) after the trade deadline.
Yeah, these massive discrepancies have absolutely nothing to do with Danny Boy’s tank job. Markkanen’s body simply broke down inexplicably in early February in each of the past two seasons. It’s clearly entirely the player’s fault.
His contract is an insane bargain