The Spurs are among the 22 NBA teams that will convene in Orlando in July for a restarted season, but they will do so without the presence of one of their top stars.
LaMarcus Aldridge averaged 18.9 points and 7.4 rebounds per game for the Spurs this season, but will not be with the team later this summer after he had arthroscopic surgery to repair a rotator cuff injury to his right shoulder on April 24.
The Spurs today announced that LaMarcus Aldridge had a surgical procedure performed on his right shoulder, which will cause him to miss the remainder of the 2019-20 NBA season.
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— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) June 8, 2020
It’s a significant blow to the Spurs, who enter the restarted season at 27-36, four games back of the Grizzlies for the eight seed. Despite having a major gap to makeup to reach the postseason, the Spurs were set to come into Orlando as the team in that group battling for the final playoff spot with the best record this season against above-.500 teams. That is a key distinction for the bubble league, as only playoff teams plus the additional five in the hunt in the West and the Wizards in the East were making the trip. Teams are only going to be playing the best in the NBA, and as such, it might be a war of attrition among those looking to claw their way into the postseason.
The Spurs will have to lean more heavily on the likes of Jakob Poeltl and Rudy Gay to fill the void left by Aldridge — who had become, somewhat improbably, the team’s second best three-point shooter this season from his frontcourt spot.
