The Utah Jazz will be without their starting center for at least a month, and the clock did not even start on a regular season game. The team announced that Jusuf Nurkic suffered a partial plantar plate tear of the second toe on his right foot and will be re-evaluated in four weeks.
Nurkic got hurt in Utah’s preseason opener against Denver on October 4. Four weeks from the announcement lands in early November, which means he misses opening night on October 20 and a meaningful chunk of the first month.
This Is Not a Minor Toe Problem
Plantar plate injuries are the kind of thing that sounds small and is not, especially for a 6-foot-11, 290-pound center who plays almost entirely below the rim. Every push off, every box out and every drop step runs through the front of that foot. Four weeks is the re-evaluation date, not a return date, and Utah was careful to word it that way.
Losing him matters more than his scoring suggests. Nurkic averaged 10.9 points, 10.4 rebounds and 4.8 assists in 41 games last season, and the rebounding and passing are the parts the Jazz cannot easily replace. He is one of the better high post passers at the position, which is exactly the skill that keeps a young offense organized.
Jaxson Hayes and Mo Bamba Get the Minutes
Will Hardy’s options behind Nurkic are Jaxson Hayes and Mohamed Bamba. Both are athletic, both can finish lobs and neither is going to grab ten rebounds a night or run the kind of offense Nurkic runs from the elbow. Utah can also slide Jaren Jackson Jr., acquired from Memphis in February, to center in stretches, though asking a 49-million-dollar forward to absorb heavy center minutes in October is a good way to get him hurt too.
The honest version is that this is an audition month. Hayes gets a real runway to show he can hold a starting job, and Bamba gets the backup minutes he has not had in a while. If either one answers, Utah’s offseason center math gets a lot simpler.
The Timing Is Awkward, Not Fatal
Utah is not building around Nurkic. The roster is pointed at Lauri Markkanen, Jackson and Keyonte George, who signed a five-year, 157.5-million-dollar extension last month. Nurkic is the stabilizer, the veteran who makes the first ten minutes of a game look organized while the young players figure out spacing.
Missing that for a month is survivable. What the Jazz cannot afford is this becoming a recurring soft tissue story, because foot injuries for big men rarely resolve on the first timeline. Nurkic has already dealt with serious lower body trouble in his career, and he turned 32 in August.
So treat the four weeks as the floor and plan for six. Hardy will tell everyone this is a chance for the young guys, and he is not wrong, but the first month of this season just got harder for a team that needs to show real progress to justify the money it has handed out.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
