The Los Angeles Lakers never reached their full potential during the 2023-24 NBA season and a big reason for that was injuries.
A number of key guys missed significant time due to injury with Jarred Vanderbilt being chief among them. There were high expectations for Vanderbilt going into the year after coming over at the deadline and making an immediate impact the season before and then signing a contract extension last summer.
But unfortunately, he was never able to get his season off the ground running as he dealt with foot and heel issues in training camp that never really went away. He wound up playing in just 29 games with the final one coming on Feb. 1.
The hope was that after having a full offseason to rest and recover that Vanderbilt would be ready to go for training camp, which kicks off at the end of September. It doesn’t appear that is the case though as Mike Bresnahan reported on Spectrum’s ‘Lakeshow’ Podcast that Vanderbilt may not be ready for the start of training camp:
“Vando is gonna be interesting. I’m not sure he’ll be ready for training camp or even for the preseason games. It’s a foot injury. He opted not to have a procedure in-season when he got hurt in February. So we’ll see if he’s ready to go. I don’t have a lot of details on it but I’m not sure he’ll be ready for training camp. Regular season is a different story, hopefully he’s ready by then. But nothing concrete on him yet.”
This is obviously not ideal as it seems that the foot injury has continued to linger and will be something to monitor this season as well.
While Vanderbilt missing the start of training camp isn’t a big deal, the fact that his foot is still not 100% after all this time means that it is possible he is not ready for Opening Night.
JJ Redick: Jarred Vanderbilt will play big role for Lakers
Jarred Vanderbilt will play a big role for the Lakers this season if he is healthy, but that is now a big if heading into the year.
Regardless, new head coach JJ Redick discussed what he expects from the two-way wing.
“I have. I think the unique thing about Jarred, and a number of really good teams that made deep playoff runs have guys like him, that are energy, defense, ball hawks. He can sort of … I call them energy shifters. He can change the energy of an entire game, and he doesn’t have to do it with scoring, which makes him really unique. I can’t wait to coach him. Obviously he has some rehab to do for the rest of the summer, but when he’s healthy, he’s going to be a big part of what we do.”
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