Lauri Markkanen goes out with knee injury in turnover-laden loss to Spurs

There was only 150 seconds left in the game between the Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs when Victor Wembanyama caught the ball at the right elbow and decided to drive in against Lauri Markkanen. But before Wembanyama could get any momentum, his left knee crashed into the inside of Markkanen’s left knee and the Jazz man went straight to the floor, writhing in pain.

The training staff was immediately called out to the court. Markkanen was eventually helped to the locker room by a couple of teammates and was ruled out for the rest of the game with a left knee contusion. After the game he seemed to be in good spirits as he was receiving treatment on the swollen knee at his locker after the game.

No determination has been made about Markkanen’s availability for tomorrow night’s game against the Denver Nuggets, but I would be surprised if he played. The Jazz have been ultra cautious with injuries and there wouldn’t be any reason for Markkanen to play through pain.

But the injury to Markkanen was the capper on a night that showcased one of the Jazz’s most flawed traits — their penchant for turnovers. They committed 21 turnovers that the Spurs converted into 33 points.

“Another night where we have 20-plus turnovers,” Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. “It’s just hard to win. The math is against you in those moments.”

That’s been the case for the majority of the season. Sure, this is a young Jazz team and the reasons that they aren’t good or don’t win games are numerous, but they are also dead last in the league in turnovers. They’re averaging 18.3 turnovers per game and what’s worse is that there isn’t any one kind of turnover that they commit so much more than others. If that was the case, then finding a cure would be a little easier. But the Jazz commit all kinds of turnovers.

“We have way too many turnovers dribbling in a crowd. We have way too many turnovers getting stripped one-on-one. And then we have too many pass and catch turnovers,” Hardy said. “But it’s everybody’s responsibility to take care of the ball. It’s hard because I wish, we wish that it was like one category...But it’s not. We get stripped three times one-on-one, we dribble into a crowd four times, we dribble our foot once...two moving screens. It’s an appetizer sampler of turnovers.”

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Keyonte George, John Collins and Collin Sexton have been the Jazz’s biggest culprits when it comes to turnovers, but that’s not to say that they are always the players with the most egregious ones. It really depends on the game.

Against the Spurs on Tuesday night, George finished with six turnovers, Drew Eubanks had four turnovers and there were three other players with three turnovers.

What’s most concerning are the live ball turnovers, which are ones that usually end up in transition buckets for the other team, and that’s where George leads the pack.

Since he’s the player with the ball in his hands most of the time that makes sense. It also makes sense that one of the younger players on the team is committing the most live ball turnovers. And it makes even more sense because he’s not a natural point guard. But still, there needs to be an effort to clean those plays up.

“We’ve got to do the little things,” Hardy said. “Setting your man up when you’re going to get a catch. If you’re supposed to catch it at the elbow, we need to be strong. Catch the ball with two hands. The guys that have the ball, set your man up, pass fake, then throw. There’s all those little things that add up. But I don’t think that those things are a long term issue. Those are habits that can be built.”