Thunder players Luguentz Dort, Mike Muscala and Ty Jerome will all be out for the rest of the 2021/22 season following surgeries to address various ailments, per a team press release.
Dort had an operation to treat a torn labrum in his left shoulder. Muscala had a scope and lateral ligament repair on his right ankle. Jerome, who has been dealing with a hip injury, went under the knife for what the Thunder term to be a sports hernia, and could return in just eight weeks. Oklahoma City anticipates that Dort and Muscala will be ready to play in time for the beginning of the 2022/23 NBA season.
Muscala had reportedly been considering an offseason surgery to address the ankle injury — it appears he opted to accelerate that timeline. The news of Dort and Jerome requiring surgeries comes as more of a surprise.
At 20-44, the rebuilding Thunder are currently the No. 14 seed in the Western Conference. The extended absences of Dort, Muscala and Jerome – all rotation players – for the rest of the year should help Oklahoma City’s tanking efforts.
According to Joe Mussatto of the Oklahoman (via Twitter), Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault said that the country’s top sports doctors were occupied with NFL Combine obligations over the last week, which led to all these surgeries all transpiring on the same day.
Dort, still just 22, has emerged as one of the Thunder’s best players. In 51 games this year, the defensive-oriented swingman averaged 17.2 PPG, 4.2 RPG, 1.7 APG and 0.9 SPG. “It’s gotta be pretty significant for a specialist to recommend surgery,” Daigneault said of the labrum tear, per Mussatto (Twitter link).
As Bobby Marks of ESPN tweets, the Thunder hold a $1.9MM team option for Dort for 2022/23. Should Oklahoma City pick up the option, the team could then offer him a four-year, $58MM contract extension before he reaches unrestricted free agency in 2023. The club could also turn down that team option to make him a restricted free agent this offseason.
The other two sidelined Thunder players have not been as essential for Oklahoma City this season. Jerome, a 24-year-old shooting guard, logged 7.1 PPG, 2.3 APG and 1.6 in 48 games (16.7 MPG) during his third NBA season. Muscala averaged 8.0 PPG and 3.0 RPG in 13.8 MPG across 43 contests for the Thunder, who have a $3.5MM team option on the 30-year-old big man for the 2022/23 season.
Pretty soon SGA will be “done for the season” as well with a phantom injury as well. Need to hit a top 4 pick this time around. We got lucky to get Giddey last year at 6.
I’d say I can’t believe the league allows this crap, but Adam Silver has shown time and again he is a jellyfish (i.e. no spine).
How will it even look if and when OKC is ever successful? Why would anyone want to root for this team?
Don’t bring up expansion when the actual organizations won’t even field a full roster. Disgusting.
What do you want Silver to do? Make them play their injured players? Or institute a rule that you need to win x-amount of games or your team gets punished? Teams are gonna suck every year, and sometimes it’ll be intentional and other times it won’t
I want him to fine them and take away draft picks for actively tanking.
Tank for a year or two, fine. But this has gotten ridiculous. SGA sat last year due to “injury” and now they’re doing it again. What’s the point? Why would players want to go there and waste their prime years?
They haven’t even tanked for a whole two seasons. Last year and this year. It’s not like they’ve been tanking for 5+ years like the process Sixers did
I can’t laugh at this take any harder. You write this crap every time a thunder post comes up. You have no issue with philly tanking for a decade to get good or currently houston/Orlando/Detroit but for some reason you always point all your hate at OKC.
By the way, wait til next year and I believe this will be a playoff team, barring injuries. That would equate to 2 tanking years to turn things around….hardly anything close to what philly did and they’re even a large market team.
Please show me where I’ve ever complained about OKC. In fact I stood up for them last year thinking the SGA injury was real. Now I just feel like a fool.
Houston is not tanking they are inept. Rafael Stone is a moron and will lose his job soon enough. Detroit is not tanking, they’ve had some good games this year. Orlando injuries have been real and going on all year.
By the way, wait til next year and I believe we’ll be having this same exact conversation because OKC is going nowhere. Sucks. I just want good bball. Guess that’s too much to ask from professionals…smdh
I tried to tell you last year bro, but you just were so convinced SGA was hurt. OKC clowned you bro.
They clowned you.
Way to kick a man when he is SPIRALLING
I feel like a bozo
This is year 2 of a rebuild so then by your statement you shouldn’t have any issues. Also they are mostly 23 or younger…players don’t reach their primes to their mid to late 20s
Year 2 of a rebuild? What kind of internet speeds do you get in outer freakin space?
If you really think this kind of thing is good for the sport then that’s genuinely epressing.
“I want him to fine them and take away draft picks for actively tanking.”
If someone has a torn labrum, I would think they would want to get that situated. If they’re truly “faking it,” that would be pretty obvious; it’s either torn or it’s not. As for Jerome and Muscala, even if their injuries are “fake,” it’s not like their absence is going to impact the outcome of games anyway.
You can’t just fine teams based on speculation. If OKC were really tanking so openly, wouldn’t they be sitting SGA and Giddey instead?
You can’t believe injured players follow their doctors orders and undergo surgery? In what world is that unacceptable?
In other countries, they have promotion+relegation… The race for #17 can be more interesting than the race for #1. Anyway there is no race for last, no reward for it. Something similar could be done with a 5 or 6 team minor league that all teams contribute a starter towards. The worst team every year gets relegated to here.
Many more details necessary
The fact OKC was good in the one year with CP3 traded him and then traded almost every decent NBA player they had is a joke
Give Okafor a shot