Lauri Markkanen exits Jazz loss to Kings with back spasms

The hits just keep on coming.

Late in the second quarter of the Utah Jazz's loss to the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday night, Lauri Markkanen stretched, jumped, twisted and reached out of bounds in an attempt to corral a rebound. As soon as Markkanen landed following his momentary acrobatics, he grimaced and grabbed at his lower back.

A timeout was called and Markkanen gingerly made his way to the bench, but still checked into the game when the timeout concluded. Though, his time on the court after that was short lived. Less than two minutes later, Markkanen checked out of the game, still holding onto his lower back and headed straight to the locker room. He was ruled out for the rest of the game with back spasms.

"His back pretty much locked up," Jazz head coach Will Hardy said. "He got treatment throughout halftime, and with about a minute left on the (halftime) clock, was still on the table, not really able to move. So it was my decision, and our medical team's decision, to hold him out. You know, backs are generally day-to-day. He'll wake up tomorrow and get some treatment and we'll see how he's doing. We won't make a decision on him until game day."

This comes just 24 hours after Taylor Hendricks suffered a season-ending injury in a loss to the Dallas Mavericks.

To say that the mental toll on the Jazz players has been weighty would be an understatement.

"When we're in the game and when the competition is going on, you kind of lose track of lose track of everything else in your life," Hardy said of himself and the players. "I think the second it's over, we all go back to thinking about Taylor."

But there is also some logistical rotation stuff that Hardy is having to deal with that is going to be very experimental. Before Tuesday's game even started Hardy was talking about how the team was going to have to try some new combinations on the court.

"It's gonna be a little bit night-to-night through these next couple of weeks as we try to sort out how this group fits together," Hardy said in his pre-game interview. "Because there's some voids with Taylor that we need to try to fill. There's going to be some things that we need to adjust a little bit."

Fast forward a couple of hours and Hardy was starting a lineup in the second half with two rookies (Cody Williams and Kyle Filipowski) after having already changed up the start-of-game lineup.

Jordan Clarkson started the game with Colin Sexton coming off the bench on Tuesday, and the Jazz played a number of lineups that didn't have any experience playing together during this young season and after Markkanen was ruled out, the tinkering is going to continue.

There's no definitive timeline for Markkanen, who seemed to be at least in good spirits as he was leaving the arena, but the Jazz are not in a position where they need to rush anybody back from injury.

That means that there is going to be a ton of opportunity for the young players and players who were not necessarily in the rotation to get some legitimate NBA minutes.