The Clippers got more rotten injury news Sunday.
Recently acquired guard Norman Powell suffered a fractured medial sesamoid bone in his left foot in Thursday’s loss 112-105 loss in Dallas and will be sidelined indefinitely, the team said in a news release.
In other words, Powell, 28, sustained a fracture to one of two small, round bones at the end of the metatarsal bone of the big toe. The treatment plan for now, according to the team, is non-surgical. There is no timetable for his return, the Clippers said.
The 6-foot-3 guard will join the Clippers’ injured All-Stars Kawhi Leonard (ACL) and Paul George (torn right torn ulnar collateral ligament) on the sideline, none of them with clear return dates.
Already, Leonard and George’s long-term absences have put the team in the unfortunate position as the league-leader in earnings by injured players this season, with $50,913,968 and counting, per spotrac.com. Nonetheless, the Clippers, currently 28-30 entering Monday’s game against Golden State, have managed to hover around .500 for most of the season.
Powell missed Sunday’s 99-97 victory in Dallas after he was injured in his third game with the team. He’d been acquired along with Robert Covington in a trade that sent Eric Bledsoe, Justise Winslow, Keon Johnson and a second-round pick to Portland.
After suffering the injury when Maxi Kleber fouled him on a drive to the basket with 23 seconds left in the third quarter, Powell – who said he suffers chronic ankle sprains – left the game and went to the locker room to have it checked out before returning and scoring nine points in 9:20 of fourth-quarter action.
“I was dealing with a lot of pain, but you know, I was trying to put that to the side,” Powell postgame. “Focus on trying to get a win. But it was definitely – I was definitely hurting out there.
“It was, I think they said, bruised – I don’t know how to say it – but the bottom of my big toe,” Powell added that night. “The joint. When he came down, like he slammed into it. So it was bruised there. And then I did sprain my right ankle, but I sprain my ankle every game. So I live with those, being bow-legged. That’s nothing.”
The Clippers are excited about Powell’s prospects. And the San Diego native and former UCLA star is in the first year of a five-year, $90 million contract and said he was “really happy” to be playing in L.A.
He’d begun his tenure with the team in promising fashion, averaging 21 points on 47.6% shooting and four assists in his first contests as a Clipper.
Jerry West, the Hall of Fame icon who serves as a consultant for the Clippers, raved about Powell last week at an event at the construction site of the Intuit Dome, the team’s new arena that’s scheduled to open in Inglewood 2024.
“I think we took a step the other day in acquiring Norm Powell, which we think will pay dividends because he did play with Kawhi (Leonard) when they won a championship (in Toronto in 2019) and he’s just a terrific player,” West said.
Now they’ll have a third terrific player rehabbing from injury, with the focus on the franchise’s hopefully healthier future.
Here’s a clearer angle at where Maxi Kleber lands on Norman Powell’s foot, which is where he suffered the foot fracture. pic.twitter.com/C6vPaBVvWZ
— Tomer Azarly (@TomerAzarly) February 13, 2022