Tuesday 23rd April 2024,

#BanInjuries: Ankle Injury Dennis Schroder Suffered in Hawks Loss to Nets Isn’t Serious, But he Could Miss Time

admin October 23, 2017 Blogs No Comments

injuries

Ban. Injuries.

Perhaps we say this every year, but for the life of me, I cannot remember a more brutal opening week in the NBA than the one we’re still living through. Gordon Hayward and Jeremy Lin are done for the season. Draymond Green was/is dealing with some knee problems. Andre Iguodala couldn’t play in the Golden State Warriors’ first game. Neither Marcus Morris nor Markieff Morris was healthy enough to start the year in their respective team’s lineup. Ditto for Nicolas Batum. Bobby Portis punched Nikola Mirotic out of the Chicago Bulls’ rotation. Derrick Rose suffered another ankle injury. Chris Paul will be missing a few weeks with a knee injury.

The list goes on for much too long, and though some of these setbacks were incurred before the 2017-18 schedule actually tipped off, the point stands: Screw injuries.

And that brings us to Dennis Schroder, the latest high(ish) profile name to get hit by the injury bug. He turned his left ankle pretty badly during the Atlanta Hawks’ Sunday afternoon loss to the Brooklyn Nets. Like, seriously, it didn’t look pretty:

Dennis Schroder is down after this injury. He was assisted off the court pic.twitter.com/2CMtBNdFG6

— Anthony Puccio (@APOOCH) October 22, 2017

While his X-rays apparently came back negative, the Hawks appear to bracing for him to miss some time, per the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Adam Zagoria:

X-rays on Sunday revealed nothing serious, Schroder said, and he will aim to be back on the floor later this week, possibly for Thursday’s game at Chicago, the final road game of a five-game swing to open the season. The Hawks home opener is Friday against Denver.

“That’s my plan [to return Thursday], I don’t know how it works out,” Schroder told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the locker room after he iced his left ankle and spoke to Hawks’ medical personnel. “Let the team try to win the game in Miami and then we going to see day-by-day.”

He added: “They told me just now about the X-ray, it was nothing serious.”

Missing one or two games wouldn’t be a huge deal, but the Hawks offense needs Schroder. Their five-out lineups have allowed him to get into the paint essentially at will thus far, and they don’t have a nice bundle of secondary playmakers to offset his absence. They already rank near the bottom seven of offensive efficiency per 100 possessions, and although that mark actually improves without Schroder, his time on the sidelines forces backups to face starters, which has a trickle-down effect on the entire team.

Granted, the Hawks are rebuilding, even if they won’t say it. And when you’re not trying to win games, losing your best player isn’t the worst thing in the world. His long-term health is far more important. Still, the Hawks are already slogging through the schedule with DeAndre’ Bembry. Playing without Schroder for any sort of time caps their ability to experiment—a necessary part of their attempts to see whether this core has any big-picture appeal.