The Los Angeles Lakers never reached their full potential in the 2023-24 NBA season and one of the main reasons for that was injuries.
Several key players missed significant time due to injuries, including Jarred Vanderbilt. Expectations were high for Vanderbilt entering the season after he arrived at the deadline and made an immediate impact last season, then signed a contract extension last summer.
Unfortunately, he never got his season off to a flying start, as he dealt with foot and heel issues in training camp that never really went away. He only played in 29 games, the last coming on February 1.
It was hoped that after a full offseason to rest and recover, Vanderbilt would be ready to participate in training camp, which begins in late September. That doesn’t appear to be the case. Mike Bresnahan reported on Spectrum’s “Lakeshow” podcast that Vanderbilt may not be ready for the start of training camp:
“Vando is going to be interesting. I’m not sure he’ll be ready for training camp or even preseason games. It’s a foot injury. He opted out of in-season surgery when he got injured in February. So we’ll see if he’s ready. I don’t have a lot of details on that, but I’m not sure he’ll be ready for training camp. The regular season is a different story, hopefully he’ll be ready by then. But nothing concrete on him yet.”
This is obviously not ideal as it appears the foot injury continues to persist and will be something to monitor this season as well.
While Vanderbilt’s absence at the start of training camp isn’t a big deal, the fact that his foot still isn’t 100 percent after all this time means it’s possible he won’t be ready for opening night.
JJ Redick: Jarred Vanderbilt will play important role for Lakers
Jarred Vanderbilt will play a big role for the Lakers this season if he’s healthy, but that’s a big “if” heading into the year.
Anyway, the new head coach JJ Redick discussed what he expects of the two-way wing.
“Yeah. I think Jarred is unique, and a number of really good teams that have had good playoff runs have guys like him who are energy hawks, defensive hawks, ball hawks. He can kind of… I call them energy changers. 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’m looking forward to coaching him. He’s obviously got 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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