The Grizzlies have made two announcements today, one concerning injuries and one concerning the players brought in to mitigate them.
First up the bad news concerning Mike Conley and Chris Andersen, straight from the press release:
Conley has missed the last three games with left foot soreness and received an additional examination yesterday, which showed Achilles tendonitis. He will remain out and will be re-evaluated in 3 to 4 weeks.
Andersen experienced a left shoulder subluxation and left the game on March 6 vs. Phoenix with 7:59 remaining in the second quarter. Additional examination and an MRI confirmed the injury. He will be listed as out and will continue to be re-evaluated.
Three to four weeks puts Conley out for most of the remainder of the regular season, and that 3-4 weeks is just when he’s going to be re-evaluated, at which point who knows whether he’ll be ready to return or not. With Achilles tendonitis, the longer you can stay off of it, the better, so my bet would be that he won’t be back until the playoffs, if then. Vince Carter was listed as “questionable” earlier (he left last night’s game with a leg injury) and I haven’t yet heard any updates on his condition.
The good news is that the Grizzlies were granted a hardship exception, allowing them to carry more than 15 players on the roster. As a result, they’ve signed Ray McCallum and Alex Stepheson to 10-day contracts. McCallum played for the Spurs in 31 games this season, and was pretty good, and Stepheson was on the camp roster this year, and has logged some time in Iowa, where averaged almost 16 points a game.
Will they be able to keep winning this way? Who knows. But at least they’ll have enough players in uniform to avoid forfeiting—although at this point, that might not be the worst thing, considering how quickly the injuries are piling up.
McCallum and Stepheson are expected to be in uniform tonight.
