Kings' Domantas Sabonis suffers right ankle injury in win against Grizzlies

Yahoo

18-03-2025

All-NBA center Domantas Sabonis left the Sacramento Kings' Monday night victory over the Memphis Grizzlies early after suffering a right ankle injury in the third quarter.
Sabonis had already left the court to head to the locker room once earlier in the proceedings, after a first-quarter collision with Grizzlies guard Luke Kennard left him with a cut above his left eye. He'd return after getting it stitched up, scoring six points with four rebounds in 11 first-half minutes to help stake Sacramento to a double-digit lead at intermission.
In the opening minute of the third quarter, though, as Sabonis rolled to the rim after screening for teammate Zach LaVine, he stepped on the foot of Grizzlies defender Jaylen Wells, rolling his right ankle hard and instantly grasping for it as he crashed to the court in a heap:
The 28-year-old big man immediately signaled to the Kings' bench that he needed to come out of the game, and needed the help of teammates and coaches to get to his feet and hobble back to the Sacramento locker room. Shortly thereafter, the team ruled him out for the remainder of the game.
The Kings would rally without their starting center, riding red-hot shooting from beyond the 3-point arc and the playmaking of LaVine, Malik Monk and DeMar DeRozan to build a lead that ballooned to 20 points in the fourth quarter and hold off the visiting Grizz for a 132-122 win. Sacramento improved to 34-33, remaining in ninth place in the Western Conference.
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Interim Kings coach Doug Christie, who looked shaken on the sideline in the moments after Sabonis' injury, told reporters after the game that he had no update on his star center's status. His teammates sounded an optimistic note about a player who, in LaVine's words, 'gets bumped and bruised because he plays so damn hard.'
'I'm always concerned when my teammate's not on the court,' Monk told reporters. 'I really didn't see the play until I looked up. It looked pretty bad. But Domas [is] strong. He'll probably be back sooner than we think.'
The Kings will certainly hope so. They enter Tuesday 3.5 games back of the eighth-place Clippers, two games ahead of 10th-place Dallas and three games up on 11th-place Phoenix; an extended absence for Sabonis could deal a serious blow to their chances of remaining in play-in position. (It could also harm the chances of Sabonis — an All-NBA Third Team selection in each of the last two seasons — reaching the 65-game threshold for inclusion in year-end awards voting.)
Sabonis is averaging 19.2 points, an NBA-leading 13.9 rebounds and 6.2 assists in 34.8 minutes per game, shooting 63% on 2-pointers and 42.5% from 3-point land. The only other player hitting those marks this season? MVP candidate Nikola Jokić — a similarly bruising point-center offensive hub to whom Sabonis' game is frequently compared.
While Sabonis' absence isn't quite as detrimental to Sacramento as Jokić's would be to the Nuggets — although, y'know, try telling the Warriors that — it's still considerable. For the season, the Kings have outscored opponents by 4.2 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with Sabonis on the court, according to Cleaning the Glass, and have been outscored by 5.7 points-per-100 with him off of it.
That net-rating gap has narrowed somewhat since the Kings' roster-remaking trade deadline, which saw the franchise ship out Sabonis' running buddy De'Aaron Fox, shooting guard Kevin Huerter and lightly used reserves Jordan McLaughlin, Alex Len and Colby Jones and bring in not only LaVine, but also veteran center Jonas Valančiūnas and combo forward Jake LaRavia (who played on Monday like he had a bone to pick with the Grizzlies team that jettisoned him). Valančiūnas, a stalwart per-minute producer dating back to his days in Toronto, has put up 9.5 points, 8.1 rebounds and 2.3 assists in just 19.5 minutes per game in Sacramento; the Kings are plus-27 in 321 minutes with Valančiūnas on the floor and Sabonis off of it, according to PBP Stats.
But even with Valančiūnas and the versatile Trey Lyles to plug the gap, the Kings are 31-27 with Sabonis in the lineup and just 3-6 in the nine games they've played without him; that includes four losses in six contests that he missed earlier this month with a left hamstring injury. Even if they're able to hold down the fort and hold off the likes of the Mavericks and Suns in the play-in chase, the Kings know their best chance of making any noise come mid-April comes with their hard-charging center upright and fully operational.
'Domas wants to be out there as much as anybody,' LaVine told reporters. 'We need to make sure he doesn't rush back and takes care of himself, because we're going to need him in the long run.'