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SALT LAKE CITY — Lauri Markkanen crashed to the ground late in the third quarter of Utah's 127-115 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday. And for a time, he stayed down.
Markkanen sat on the court, holding and flexing his left wrist in clear discomfort. It wasn't a new injury — far from it. Markkanen, who missed Monday's win with back soreness, has been fighting off the pain in his wrist for about a month now.
The fall just brought it to the forefront of his mind again.
"It's been just getting hit for a month," he said. "So just seeing what you can play through, and even though my wrists hurt I can do other things. Once you get going you don't really think about it, but then, obviously, dead balls and stuff. It happened again, but, I mean, we'll see."
Markkanen was able to finish the game — he took another hard fall in the fourth quarter after a hard foul kept him down momentarily again — and an initial X-ray came back "clean," according to the All-Star forward. But the Jazz will examine him further on Thursday to determine if he'll miss any time to heal from the injury.
"We'll have him looked at by our medical team," Jazz coach Will Hardy said. "They talked to him during the game and he said he was OK, but when your body cools down, he wakes up tomorrow, it could be a different story."
So for now, it's a wait and see game for the Jazz. Markkanen has played in 64 of Utah's 72 games, and has battled through a number of nagging injuries this season — he's missed time due to knee, back and hip issues this season.
"I've always said I don't think you feel 100% after the first day of training camp," Markkanen said. "After that, you're not 100% again the whole season. There's stuff you can play through."
The wrist/hand injury has been one of those things he's played through, but will it continue to be? As of now, that's to be determined.
"I think any top player in the league is beat up," Hardy said. "I mean, shoot, they're all beat up. It's a physical sport and we play the game, a bunch of games now — 72 of them. So he'll get looked at tomorrow and it'll be a day-to-day thing — just kind of monitoring his body."
