Grizzlies backup point guard Tyus Jones is battling knee soreness and will miss at least a week of action before being reassessed, per an official team announcement (Twitter link).
The 32-33 Grizzlies, the West’s current No. 8 seed, will play their fourth seeding game a week from today, on August 5, against the 28-36 Pelicans, the current tenth seed. There are currently six teams in the West scheduled to compete for the conference’s eighth seed. The loss to the club’s depth in these crucial pre-playoff games could be an impediment.
Though Jones is a bench player averaging just 19.5 MPG, he is a consistent rotation piece who has logged time in every single game for the Grizzlies this season. The 6’3″ guard out of Duke signed a three-year, $24MM offer sheet with Memphis as a restricted free agent last summer — his former team, the Timberwolves, declined to match.
Jones is enjoying his best scoring year as a pro during his inaugural Grizzlies season, averaging a career-best 7.4 PPG on a career-high 45.9% field goal shooting. He’s also making a career-best 37.9% of his three-point attempts on 6.6 tries per night to go along with 4.4 APG and 1.6 RPG.
Chris Herrington of the Daily Memphian tweets that the loss of Jones will necessitate more time running the point for second-year guard De’Anthony Melton and that little-used Grizzlies backup Grayson Allen figures to receive rotation minutes during Jones’s absence.