Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert has already missed more games this season than he has in any of the previous three seasons, and he’ll be sidelined a little while longer as he deals with a calf strain.
The three-time Defensive Player of the Year believed that the Jazz would proceed with caution when he spoke with reporters shortly after sustaining a left calf strain on Sunday night, and that’s exactly what the Jazz intend to do.
Gobert has missed the last two games after the injury occurred in the fourth quarter of the Jazz’s loss to the Golden State Warriors on Sunday. While the Jazz are not worried about the injury being a long-term problem, they are going to be incredibly cautious in bringing Gobert back so as not to aggravate the strain further.
“We’re going to be pretty conservative with the calf strain,” Jazz general Justin Zanik said on Wednesday. “It’s pretty much the best case scenario though, if you’re going to have one (a calf strain), it’s about as mild as it can be.”
Though the Jazz are not giving a concrete timeline for Gobert’s return, Zanik did say he believes Gobert will be back on the court before the All-Star Break, which begins on Feb. 18.
“I think there’s a real chance that it’s before that,” Zanik said. “I don’t see this as a three-week thing. It’s kind of a daily thing to see how he feels and then also putting some time behind it between the actually injury and when he returns. I don’t want to say that he’ll come back in seven days or 10 days — though he might. But it also might be a couple weeks.”
Gobert missed five games in early January after testing positive for COVID-19 and entering the league’s health and safety protocol, and missed his sixth and seventh games of the season with the calf injury on Monday and Wednesday (both against the Phoenix Suns).
Next up for the Jazz is a two-game trip that starts against the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday and concludes against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday.