Jabari Walker's Knee Keeps Bettors Guessing Ahead of Saturday
Underdog NBA reported Walker is listed questionable for Saturday.
The 76ers might be down a rotation big this weekend, as Underdog NBA reports Jabari Walker is officially listed as questionable for Saturday with a lingering knee issue.
If you are the kind of sicko sweating out backup power forward minutes on a Saturday night, this is the exact type of update that keeps you refreshing your phone. Walker tweaked his right knee against the Milwaukee Bucks back on October 24 and has been bouncing around the injury report ever since.
The 24-year-old hasn't exactly been carrying the offensive load for this season. Through three games, he is logging just 6.3 minutes a night, putting up 2.7 points and 1.3 rebounds. But he is shooting a comical 75 percent from the floor in those brief cameos, which is the kind of efficiency that makes analytics nerds lose their minds over a four-shot sample size.
Walker is currently navigating the surreal reality of sharing a locker room with LeBron James in . Going from a second-round pick in Portland to getting on-court solutions from a guy who has been in the league since Walker was in diapers is a wild career arc. Now he just needs his knee to cooperate so he can actually stay on the floor to use that advice.
For the betting markets, a questionable tag on a deep rotation guy is pure chaos. It won't move the moneyline, but it absolutely scrambles the rebounding props for the rest of the second unit. If Walker sits, those six to ten minutes have to go somewhere, and sportsbooks will happily take your money while you try to guess who gets them.
We will likely have to wait until warmups to see if Walker gets the green light. If he is in street clothes again, expect the Sixers to dig a little deeper into the bench to keep their frontcourt fresh.