Jaren Jackson Jr. Tears MCL as the Utah Jazz Frontcourt Collapses
Sources tell Shams Charania and Tim MacMahon that Jackson will not require surgery.
The Utah Jazz are barely a week into the season and their frontcourt is already turning into a triage unit. According to Shams Charania and Tim MacMahon, star forward Jaren Jackson Jr. has suffered a torn MCL in his right knee and will be sidelined for the next six to eight weeks.
The only silver lining here is that Jackson will not require surgery. That is a massive relief for a guy who literally just had a procedure on his left knee back in February right after the Memphis Grizzlies traded him to Salt Lake City.
Still, losing your defensive anchor before Halloween is the kind of disaster that makes a front office start looking at lottery odds. The Jazz are currently sitting at a miserable 1-3, and taking Jackson out of the rotation is like removing the load-bearing wall from a house that is already actively on fire.
Before his knee gave out, Jackson was putting up 16.3 points and 1.3 blocks in 26 minutes a night. Those are not exactly his peak Defensive Player of the Year numbers, but he was the only thing keeping opposing offenses from treating the paint like a layup line.
For anyone holding Utah win total tickets, this is the part where you start sweating. The Jazz are already dealing with a laundry list of injuries to big men like Walker Kessler and Jusuf Nurkic, meaning their depth chart is currently held together by athletic tape and pure imagination.
Utah has to figure out how to patch this massive hole immediately, starting with their upcoming matchup against the San Antonio Spurs. If they cannot find a way to manufacture some rim protection, this six-to-eight-week window is going to feel like a decade.