Rudy Gobert Injury Could be Devastating Blow to Utah Jazz Playoff Hopes

By Djack

Rudy Gobert went down with a knee injury in the first minute of last night's game one playoff matchup with the Clippers. Immediately, fans panicked, and figured their season would be coming to the most disappointing of ends with one of their key pieces going down so early into their postseason run. Well, the Jazz ended up winning without having Gobert the entire game on a Joe Johnson buzzer beater, shows just how bad the Clippers are come playoff time, and then following the game it was announced he didn't have a torn ACL. Fans were elated, they won and their best player isn't going to miss an entire year due to one of the most gruesome injuries in all of sports, what a night. Not so fast, Gobert's x-rays may have come back negative, however that does not mean he's going to be able to come back and play in game 2, or even in this series at all for that matter.

Hyper-extension of the knee and a bone contusion is the official diagnosis given to Rudy Gobert. If it's as serious as the Kevin Durant case, he'll be out the entire playoffs. If it's more of a minor case he'll still have to miss 2 weeks time, meaning at minimum he'll the rest of this series. They're going to reevaluate the knee at some point today and maybe just maybe it'll somehow not be nearly as bad as they thought, and he'll be right back on the court for game 2. I see that as being the least likely of the the scenarios, though.

It's either he's out for good, he comes right back, or he misses basically the entire series against the Clippers. If he misses the entire series against the Clippers, he'll be missing the entire playoffs because there's noway the Jazz are beating the Clippers 3 more times without Gobert. I know they miraculously pulled off game 1 without Gobert, but if they know he's not going to be able to play they'll just gameplan to attack the paint, and absolutely dominate the Jazz. Jazz fans say your prayers, if Gobert isn't back for this series you can kiss this series goodbye. Clippers fans say your prayers, if Gobert does come back you're screwed because you couldn't even beat the Jazz without him. The injury status of Rudy Gobert will decide the fate of this series