Moses Brown to Undergo Left Wrist Surgery, Out Indefinitely
Brown is not with the Trail Blazers on their current road trip.
📍NEW YORK — The Trail Blazers announced on Monday afternoon that backup center Moses Brown will undergo surgery to repair a non-displaced scaphoid fracture on his left wrist. A timetable for his return will be determined after the surgery.
Brown played and started in the first game of Portland’s current seven-game road trip, a loss in Phoenix on Jan. 1, and has been out since then with what the team was calling a left wrist sprain. He has not been with the Blazers since that first game of the road trip, returning to Portland for treatment and examination on the wrist, which is when the fracture was discovered.
Brown’s $2 million salary was only $500,000 guaranteed but became fully guaranteed for the rest of the year when he was not waived by Sunday. The team waived their two other non-guaranteed players, Ish Wainright and Skylar Mays, on Saturday, opening up two roster spots.
At some point, whether now or down the line, it is expected that one of those open roster spots will be used to convert Duop Reath from a two-way to a standard NBA contract. Reath has become Portland’s regular backup center since Robert Williams III underwent season-ending knee surgery in early November, and has started most games since Deandre Ayton has been out with right knee tendinitis. Reath has played in 23 games with the Blazers, over halfway to the limit of 50 games for two-way players.
The Blazers have two weeks from this past Saturday, when they waived Mays and Wainright, to get back up to the minimum of 14 players under contract, not counting two-ways. Unless they sign someone on the free-agent market or trade for multiple players (unlikely this far out from the Feb. 8 trade deadline), converting Reath would be the most logical way to fill that roster spot.
In the short term, Reath and Ibou Badji will likely continue to be the Blazers’ rotation at center. Ayton has not been with the team at all on the current road trip, staying in Portland to get treatment on his knee. Before Sunday’s win in Brooklyn, head coach Chauncey Billups said there was no timetable for Ayton’s return, but he was hopeful that he will join the team at some point on the trip, which continues in New York on Tuesday against the Knicks and wraps up with a back-to-back on Thursday and Friday in Oklahoma City and Minnesota.
“Reath has played in 23 games with the Blazers, over halfway to the limit of 50 games for two-way players.”