Joe Johnson has been out with a wrist injury for most of the 2017-18 season. After it was announced he will miss even more time, here’s why that will continue to hurt the Jazz.
Utah Jazz veteran wing Joe Johnson has been sidelined from game action while dealing with a wrist injury for most of the 2017-18 NBA season.
On Wednesday, on the brink of what many thought would be around the time Johnson would return, we learned he will be out even longer.
The 16-year veteran suffered an injury to his right wrist — his shooting wrist — during a game on Oct. 30, just seven games into the regular season. With what we now know as tendon instability in his right wrist being the reason for his absence, Johnson sat out the entire month of November in the hopes of healing up and eyeing a return when the calendar turned to December.
But on Wednesday night, the team released an injury update saying that, after consulting with a hand specialist, Johnson will be sidelined longer and will be reevaluated again in two weeks. The update did, however, say that Johnson is showing progress in making his return to the Jazz.
With the Jazz performing below expectations so far this year while dealing with an injured star player in Rudy Gobert, it would have been nice for Utah to get Johnson back in the rotation to try and smooth out the road bumps while still trying to make a run at staying with the rest of the pack in the Western Conference.
But with the extended absence of Johnson, with really no guarantee that he will even be ready to return when those two weeks expire, that delay will hurt the Jazz until he is indeed healthy enough to return.
Over his current year-plus stint with Utah, Johnson has been a nice addition to the Jazz bench, providing them with a consistent offensive threat within the second unit.
In his seven games, Johnson wasn’t dropping incredible numbers, averaging 6.3 points, 2.7 rebounds and 1.6 assists per game, but he was someone who could do a nice job in eating up some minutes until the starters returned.
Maybe the most underrated part about Johnson is that fact that he provides some veteran leadership that could help a team going through a rough patch like Utah currently is.
When you look at the current rotation for the Jazz, you see players such as Gobert, Donovan Mitchell, Derrick Favors and Ricky Rubio that have carried the starting unit up to this point. You then see a player such as Rodney Hood, who has been almost forced to come off the bench due to lack of depth in the second unit.
But that’s really about it. And that’s where Johnson could make a difference coming off the bench for Utah. With Johnson, you add another wing to the rotation, while maybe even moving Hood back to the starting five or playing him more with the starting unit.
A stat that backs all of this up is the point distribution in the rotation. In the starting five, Utah is averaging 63.9 points (23rd in the NBA) in 29 minutes per game (20th in NBA). The bench ranks much better, averaging 38 points (11th in NBA) in 19.1 minutes (12th in NBA). But outside of Hood, who is accountable for a bulk of that production with averaging a team-best of just under 18 points per game, there isn’t much depth.
That’s where Johnson could come in and give Utah a much-needed boost, but that will now officially have to wait just a little while longer for Jazz fans.
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This goes for every NBA player in that you hope for a speedy recovery from an injury, but that very much applies to the Jazz right now. The longer Johnson is out, the longer depth will continue to be an issue in Utah. And that delay does nothing but hurt the Jazz.