NBA injury update roundup: Jalen Williams, Victor Wembanyama, Luka Dončić and more

To win big in the NBA Playoffs, you need to be good. Yes. But, you also need lady luck to smile in your direction when it comes to injuries. A great team can be sent home early because a marquee player missed a crucial game, and a flawed one can escape some matchups they probably shouldn't have because they won the war of attrition.

It is by far and away the worst part of the game, but it is a part of the game, so we can't ignore it. Here are some of the big names to keep an eye on when monitoring injury reports.

Victor Wembanyama, San Antonio Spurs

We'll start with the obvious one and try to keep it brief since we've already discussed this pretty recently. Victor Wembanyama has a concussion, and with the San Antonio Spurs' series tied at one game a piece with the Portland Trail Blazers, there is a chance that the projected title contender is sent home early if they don't get their prodigious five man back soon. The good news is that Wembanyama has already been doing some light cardio work and hasn't been ruled out for Game 3 at Portland yet, so hopefully, he is recovering from this incident at a swift (and safe) pace.

Jalen Williams, Oklahoma City Thunder

The genesis for this post came from the unfortunate sequence that saw Jalen Williams apparently tweak his left hamstring. Fortunately, this isn't the same hamstring (that was his right side) that forced him to miss a large portion of the season. Unfortunately, hamstring injuries are always pretty finicky. As the tweet below highlights, how long he will be out depends on the severity of the injury.

The Thunder are a juggernaut who can pretty easily dispatch of the Phoenix Suns and the Los Angeles Lakers/Houston Rockets (so long as a certain somebodies don't come back for LA) without Williams. So, a Grade I strain shouldn't be the end of the world, but if it's worse than that...oh boy.

Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves, Los Angeles Lakers

After Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves went down, most of us were ready to bury the Lakers (not I, though!). But lo and behold, LeBron James, JJ Redick, and Luke Kennard (?) have figured out a way to take a 2-0 lead against the Rockets. Now, it looks like we may be seeing Doncic and Reaves again before this season is over.

As of right now, it looks like Reaves is going to come back before Doncic, as the former has already resumed on-court work while the latter is still out indefinitely.

Still, even with his progress, it doesn't sound like we will see Reaves until Game 5 or 6 (if the series even goes that far). Right now, it sounds like Dončić will not be suiting up in the first round.

Immanuel Quickley, Toronto Raptors

As expected, the Toronto Raptors are not doing well against a good team in the Cleveland Cavaliers. A big reason why is they are missing their best spacer in Immanuel Quickley (37.4 percent on 6.8 3-pointers per game), who did not play in the first two games of the series (hamstring). Right now, he is listed as questionable for Game 3. Even with the power of their home fans, I don't think the Raptors can win without Quickley. And since falling behind 0-3 is basically a death sentence, Toronto better hope he is ready to go for Game 3.

Peyton Watson, Denver Nuggets

The Minnesota Timberwolves proved that they are not going down without a fight after winning Game 2 against the Denver Nuggets. A big reason why they were able to win is that they were able to expose Denver's lack of paint protection (scoring 52 points in the paint). Peyton Watson, one of the team's best rim protectors (84th percentile block rate), has yet to play in this series, and is already listed out for Game 3 with, you guessed it, a hamstring injury! I still think the Nuggets have the edge in this series, but with Watson in danger of missing the entire first round, they are really going to have to dig deep to pull this one off.

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