Vince Williams Jr. will undergo season-ending ACL surgery
Utah Jazz forward Vince Williams Jr. has suffered a torn left ACL and will undergo season-ending surgery, league sources told ClutchPoints on Tuesday. An MRI on Tuesday morning confirmed Utah’s initial fear, and Williams will spend most of the upcoming offseason recovering from this severe knee injury.
The injury occurred Monday night when the Jazz were on the road against the Houston Rockets. With about nine minutes left in the second quarter, Williams ran shoulder-to-shoulder with Tarry Eason after Utah turned the ball over. In transition, Eason appeared to hit Williams on purpose to gain better positioning for a 2-on-1 opportunity.
Then Williams’ right knee buckled under him and extended inward. He immediately fell to the ground clutching his right knee in front of the Jazz bench. Will Hardy was furious with the refs for not making the call, as Eason’s physicality with Williams on the play could easily have been considered an offensive foul.
Williams, who was in obvious pain, did not put any weight on his leg as the Jazz carried him to the locker room.
After the game, Eason went out of his way to go to the jazz locker room and check on Williams, stating that he has a lot of “respect” for him and didn’t “intend” to hurt him, according to the Deseret News. Eason apologized for the unfortunate injury and made it clear that he had no intention of trying to hurt Williams in the game.
“It doesn’t look great,” Hardy said curtly in his postgame comments. “That’s not basketball.”
Williams was traded to the Jazz on February 3 in an eight-player deal with the Memphis Grizzlies that also sent All-Star big man Jaren Jackson Jr. to Salt Lake City. Jackson was recently waived by the Jazz and could miss the rest of the 2025-26 NBA season. underwent surgery to remove localized pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS) growth of the left knee.
In six games with the Jazz, Williams averaged 4.7 points and 3.2 rebounds in approximately 14.0 minutes per game. This season with Memphis and Utah, he shot 35.3 percent from the floor and 31.1 percent from 3-point range.
2026-02-24 19:55:00
