Getty Golden State Warriors center Damian Jones.
Damian Jones may be out for the season after suffering a torn pectoral muscle in last night’s loss to the Detroit Pistons. He left the game at the end of the third quarter after a rough play beneath the basket as both teams fought for a rebound on the Pistons’ end.
Check out this video of the injury. You can see Jones’s arm get caught up awkwardly with Andre Drummond’s arm as he reaches up for a rebound. The arm gets pulled backward, and Jones immediately grabs for his shoulder.
Here is the play Damian Jones tore his left pectoral
He received an MRI later that night and it was confirmed that Jones suffered a torn left pectoral muscle, according to Golden State Warriors PR. Adrian Wojnarowski further confirmed that the third-year player will undergo surgery to repair the damage, and he’ll face a pretty lengthy recovery:
Warriors center Damian Jones will undergo surgery to repair his torn left pectoral this week, league source tells ESPN. Jones will meet with a specialist in Chicago prior, and they’ll have better idea after procedure if he can return late in playoffs — or if he’s out for season.
It’s not concrete at this point whether Jones will be out for the rest of the season or will be able to return for the team’s (probably long-winded) playoff run.
Jones is a consistent player off the bench for the Warriors and contributes 5.4 points per game in his typical 17 minutes. He’s more than doubled his minutes this season; he only averaged about 6 per game last year, and 9 the year before that. Losing him for the season wouldn’t be a huge blow for the former champs, though, especially with DeMarcus Cousins’s return closing in.
Warriors are Experiencing an Unexpectedly Slow Start to Season
GettyWith the addition of Boogie Cousins, the Warriors are about to have the scariest starting lineup in the NBA.
Though they’re not at full force quite yet, the Warriors were still expected to dominate as usual coming into this season. While they’re still very good, that hasn’t quite been the case. The former champs are sitting at a surprising fourth-place spot in the hotly-contested Western Conference, and have a 15-9 record.
They’ve lost more games so far this season than they typically would have by this point, which has been partly attributed to the rest of the league “figuring them out” to some degree. It’s a different NBA than it was at the beginning of the Warriors dynasty.
That being said, they’re still the favorites to get to The Finals, and it’s only a matter of time before they pass up the Thunder, Nuggets, and Clippers in the conference standings.
Who knows, though, anything can happen, and the 29 other teams in the NBA have been giving the Warriors a tougher test than they’ve had in years.
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