The Knicks announced tonight that Jeffries had suffered a left fibula fracture. It happened in today's practice when Jeffries made an impressively athletic defensive play for a 6-11 man. He sprinted to catch Stephon Marbury on a fast break and blocked Marbury's layup attempt from behind. But when he landed, Jeffries said he felt like "a horse kicked me in my shin."

Jeffries tried to get back into the game a short while later but he was clearly in pain. Mike D'Antoni immediately waved him off the court and told him not to push it. Jeffries said he heard a pop at that point. He walked off the court and talked to reporters after practice. He also walked to the team bus.

He was taken to Saratoga Hospital where x-rays showed the fracture. The team says he'll miss 6-to-8 weeks, which means sometime before Thanksgiving, or, at least the first 15 games.

This is a major blow to D'Antoni's plans for the rotation. Jeffries was penciled in as the starting center -- yes, center -- because of his high basketball IQ, skills handling the ball and, of course, the athleticism to make such plays as the block on Marbury.

But aside from his undisputable shooting issues, Jeffries has also shown a penchant for early injuries. Two years ago he broke his wrist in the first preseason game and missed the first 23 games of the season. Last year he had a sprained knee (ACL) and missed the first five games of the season.

Without Jeffries, the Knicks' already weak interior defense only gets weaker. Eddy Curry is not a shot-blocker and has yet to show any kind of defensive instincts. And then there's the little fact that the bacterial infection that has kept him out of the first three days of camp will, according to D'Antoni, will likely keep him out until perhaps Monday. Eddy will be way behind both in conditioning and in learning the system. D'Antoni will also be behind in figuring out how best to use Curry in his plans.

Posted by oohah:

This is not good...

Jeffries was just using up valuable time that can now go to Chandler and Lee.

oohah

Posted by markvmc:

I know lots of you love to hate Jared Jeffries, but if you look at one of the few basketball stats that actually gives you useful info (adjusted plus/minus), he was one of only 3 knicks last season to make a positive contribution (the others being Crawford and Balkman).

He is, by this measure much better to have on court than any of our big men (Lee included).

http://basketballvalue.com/player.php?year=2007-2008&id=315

Posted by markvmc:

Posted by Bonn1997:

Posted by markvmc:

I know lots of you love to hate Jared Jeffries, but if you look at one of the few basketball stats that actually gives you useful info (adjusted plus/minus), he was one of only 3 knicks last season to make a positive contribution (the others being Crawford and Balkman).

He is, by this measure much better to have on court than any of our big men (Lee included).

http://basketballvalue.com/player.php?year=2007-2008&id=315

Adjusted plus/minus? How exactly are they adjusting the #s?

The plus/minus figures are adjusted to control for the quality of the opposing line up, and the quality of your own line-up (i.e. your net positive/negative contribution to the team). The idea is to capture what plus-minus is supposed to capture, while controlling for the fact that, for example, some people get to play with Kobe all the time, and so would have artificially inflated plus/minus.

An explanation can be found here:

http://www.82games.com/ilardi1.htm

[Edited by - markvmc on 10-03-2008 6:38 PM]

[Edited by - markvmc on 10-03-2008 6:39 PM]