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 the majority of the upcoming offseason recovering from this major knee injury.
The injury occurred on Monday night, with the Jazz on the road to face the Houston Rockets. With about nine minutes left in the second quarter, Williams was running side-by-side with Tari Eason after Utah turned the ball over. In transition, Eason appeared to intentionally bump Williams to get better positioning for a 2-on-1 opportunity.
It was then that Williams' right knee buckled underneath him and hyperextended inwards. He immediately fell to the ground, grabbing his right knee in front of the Jazz bench. Will Hardy was furious with the officials for not making a call, as Eason's physicality with Williams on the play could have easily been deemed an offensive foul.
Williams, who was in obvious pain, did not put any weight on his leg as Jazz staff members carried him into 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 injure him, according to the Deseret News. Eason apologized for the unfortunate injury and made it clear he had no intentions of trying to hurt Williams on the play.
“Doesn't look great,” Hardy briefly said in his postgame comments. “That's not basketball.”
Williams was traded to the Jazz on Feb. 3 in the eight-player deal with the Memphis Grizzlies that also sent All-Star big man Jaren Jackson Jr. to Salt Lake City. Jackson was recently shut down by the Jazz and could miss the remainder of the 2025-26 NBA season after undergoing surgery to remove a localized pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS) growth in his left knee.
In six games with the Jazz, Williams averaged 4.7 points and 3.2 rebounds in roughly 14.0 minutes per game. This season, he has shot 35.3 percent from the floor and 31.1 percent from 3-point range with Memphis and Utah.
