Does Utah have an answer at center after the Jusuf Nurkic injury? | Jazz Notes

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Welcome to the Jazz Notes podcast. I'm Ben Anderson. I'm Chandler Holtz. We are recording this on October 9th. This is the second podcast of the week, and I think we're trying to make this a regular occurrence now. Tentatively through the preseason, but definitely regularly once we get into the regular season. Yes. We will be doing at least two a week. And next week, just a heads up, instead of doing it on Monday, we will do it on Tuesday morning because the Jazz play Monday night. Yes. So it probably doesn't make sense to do another podcast before they play again because outside of a couple of practices, we won't learn a whole lot. But it's been a busy week for the Jazz. They've played two games now going back to Sunday. We already did a podcast after that one. But we've seen a second game here in Salt Lake City against the Denver Nuggets. And the biggest piece of news, which is where we will start, is that the Jazz have lost Yusuf Nurkic for at least the next four weeks. And I think that's the important part that maybe some people are overlooking is that Chandler, they said he will be re-examined four weeks from now. Yes. Which I've heard that before, and sometimes that means he'll be re-examined a week from now, and a week from now, and a week from now. In fact, now look, I don't know exactly what was happening with George Niang last year until he got traded to Memphis, but he got re-examined, I believe, in November.

Never played.

Yeah. So I think it's important to recognize that that is always possible that this toe injury on this very big person could keep him out for a while.

Yes. So it is a partial plantar plate tear in the second toe of his right foot. It was first reported yesterday by Chris Haynes about midday and then later in the night yesterday confirmed by the Utah Jazz. And in the Jazz's confirmation, they said it happened in that first preseason game. So we think he played about 11 minutes. At some point, I will go through and see if I can find the exact play, but we know that it happened. I've

seen the play. You can't tell. He's just big and running around, and there's not like a moment where he comes up lame necessarily. He just kind of subs out of the game. So... That's almost a little scarier. I feel like it's just this issue that he has that he was trying to play through or whatever. But, again, he'll have four weeks. And as you tweeted out yesterday, at Seaholt Sports, find me at Ben's Hoops, that's the first eight games of the regular season at least. Yes. If there's more than that, it could add up quickly. And then you're talking about missing 15%, 20%, 20% of the season pretty quickly. I mean, he's already set to miss 10% of the season. That's a lot. That's a lot of games for your starting center at a position where I think it's fair to say the Jazz lacked the most depth.

Yeah, 100%. So, of course,