Two minutes into the Trail Blazers ugly loss to the Washington Wizards Tuesday, LaMarcus Aldridge went up with a turnaround jumper, Trevor Booker stepped out to contest it and in doing so slid his foot under Aldridge, and the result was a painful looking sprained ankle. (Watch the video below.)
X-Rays came back negative, but Aldridge did not travel with the team to Golden State for Wednesday’s game, reports Blazers Edge. They also return home for a third game of a back-to-back-to-back and get the Clippers Thursday night, and I wouldn’t expect to see him lace it up for that one either. This looked pretty severe.
Which is rough — Portland has lost four of its last five and is playing its worst ball of the season by far. They need to change their fortunes, and that just got a lot harder to do.
A quick look at the five-man lineups so far this season for Portland show not a lot of minutes and even less success for units that did not have Aldridge in them (from Basketballvalue.com). He is their All-Star big, their anchor and lynchpin. They need him right, but they need him back soon.
