San Antonio Spurs News: Jakob Poeltl and Spurs will miss Derrick White

This latest bit of tough San Antonio Spurs news has the team hurting

They’d gotten two solid wins under their belt and had gotten off to a decent start to the season when the San Antonio Spurs got a horrible bit of news. Fresh off of making his season debut, Derrick White would have to go back on the injury report. He had fractured his toe again.

Foot injuries are noteworthy in any sport but especially basketball. We’re all wishing for a swift and painless recovery but if this becomes a reoccurring injury there could be cause for concern. You don’t have to look far to find players who have had their careers thrown off by their feet failing them.

It’s a tough piece of news to swallow. Spurs coaches, players, and fans were surely all excited to see White back on the floor again. After leading the Spurs to an impressive showing in the bubble he was one of the players we were most looking forward to seeing play this season. Now we’re just hoping he can get healthy.

Unsurprisingly, we’re not the only ones disheartened by White’s injury. Jakob Poeltl opened up on what this loss means for the team when he spoke to the media earlier today.

Jakob Poeltl and San Antonio Spurs are going to miss Derrick White

When he talked about what the loss of White meant, Poeltl was brief and near a loss for words. You can tell how much this takes the air out of this tight-knit bunch. But he did touch on something that might be the hardest part of this injury to this player.

“Derrick’s a good guy who adds a lot of things to our team and it sucks that only one game in he’s already out for a while now.”

Any injury is bad but having one occur just as he’d gotten back to full strength is just the cherry on top. All the hours of physical therapy and conditioning to get back to top shape and now it’s back to square one.

There’s no firm timetable for this injury but it could be a while. White played basketball about four months after his initial surgery so that’s some sort of benchmark. If that’s the case then given the shortened season, we may have seen our only glimpse of him this season.

In any case, the San Antonio Spurs have to adopt a “next man up” mentality. This is going to mean that they’re going to need a lot more from Patty Mills, DeMar DeRozan, Dejounte Murray, and the rest of their guards. It’ll be a total team effort to bandage this loss.

Injuries are an unfortunate part of life in the NBA and the San Antonio Spurs are going to have to find a way to respond.