Second-year Jazz forward Taylor Hendricks requires surgery to repair his fractured right fibula and dislocated ankle, sources told Tim MacMahon of ESPN (Twitter link). Hendricks suffered the gruesome non-contact injury on Monday in Dallas. As MacMahon previously reported, Hendricks will miss the remainder of the season.
The No. 9 overall pick in last year’s draft, Hendricks is very well-liked by his teammates and showed consistent progress early on in 2024/25, particularly defensively, after an offseason of hard work; that made the injury all the more devastating, as Tony Jones of The Athletic writes.
“Taylor is very important to us,” starting center Walker Kessler told The Athletic. “In many ways, he’s our best defender. We were putting him on the other team’s best player every night. He’s such a great guy off the floor. He’s our brother. We didn’t see him (Tuesday), but we already miss him a bunch.”
Here’s more on the Jazz:
- Star forward Lauri Markkanen is considered day-to-day after experiencing lower back spasms in the first half of Tuesday’s loss to Sacramento, per ESPN News Services. “His back pretty much locked up,” head coach Will Hardy told reporters. “He got treatment throughout halftime, and with about a minute left on the clock, was still on the table, not really able to move. So it was my decision, and our medical team’s decision, to hold him out.” Markkanen received treatment on Wednesday and will be reevaluated before Thursday’s game vs. San Antonio.
- With Markkanen out for the second half, Hardy turned to rookie big man Kyle Filipowski, according to Andy Larsen of The Salt Lake Tribune, who notes that Hardy also made two other changes to the starting five on Tuesday: 2024 lottery pick Cody Williams replacing the injured Hendricks and Jordan Clarkson replacing Collin Sexton. After the game, Hardy offered an in-depth explanation for the decision to swap the two score-first guards.
- “Yeah, we’re trying to make the two groups function a little bit better, and we can do that without impacting minutes too much, impacting opportunity too much. You know, I believe in Collin. Collin knows that this has nothing to do with his play. It’s about what makes the two groups function the best. I think early in the game, the first group showed some pretty decent cohesion offensively. I think I have some work to do to help Collin with that second group, if it’s something we continue to do,” Hardy said. “But nothing with our team right now is set in stone. I had a conversation with Collin before the game about wanting to try something different to see if we could find a little bit of a rhythm offensively. And Collin’s great. He understands he wants the team to do well. He’s always done anything and everything that I’ve asked from a role standpoint, and so it’s my responsibility that, if he is going to be accepting of those things, to continue to try to think about him and put him in a position to be successful.”
Pretty gnarly injury for Hendricks. Hope he’s able to make a full recovery.
It’ll be interesting to see how the other young players respond. So far, there’s some promise. The key ability young players have to learn is consistency. As they say, only time will tell.