The injuries are continuing to mount for the Memphis Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association. After losing Ja Morant for the season to a torn labrum and Marcus Smart six weeks with a finger injury, the Grizzlies will not have shooting guard Desmond Bane of Richmond, Indiana for six weeks with a left ankle sprain according to the Associated Press on Sunday.
While Morant averaged 25.1 points per game in nine contests this season, Bane was right behind him in averaging 24.4 points per game in 37 games. Bane also averaged 5.3 assists per game, 4.6 rebounds per game, one steal per game, and had a field goal percentage of .474, three point percentage of .384, and free throw percentage of .864. In essence, with the fact that Morant has not been an integral part of the Grizzlies team this season because of his 25-game suspension to open the year in addition to his recent injury, you could make the argument that Bane has been the Grizzlies’s most valuable player.
Bane’s most impactful game for Memphis this season came on December 6. In this game, he scored 49 points in a 116-102 Grizzlies win over the Detroit Pistons. It was part of the Pistons’s NBA record 28-game losing streak.
Bane suffered the ankle injury in the Grizzlies’s 128-119 loss to the Los Angeles Clippers on Friday. When the Grizzlies played the Golden State Warriors on Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, you would have thought Memphis would have been in trouble. Instead, Vince Williams Jr. of Toledo, Ohio had the best game of his NBA career as the Virginia Commonwealth product had a career-high 24 points.
Memphis’s season could best be described as disastrous. With a record of 15 wins and 25 losses, they are 13th in the West. The only teams they are ahead of are Portland and San Antonio.
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