The Memphis Grizzlies have won five of their last six games, a fact made more impressive when you realize that Mike Conley missed four of those five wins. Conley is dealing with an injury to his Achilles that has forced him to miss some time but he was able to return on Monday. Conley ended up only missing less than two weeks with the injury but the Grizzlies considered shutting him down for a while, according to Marc Berman and Fred Kerber of the New York Post.
Before dealing with the sore left Achilles Conley was dealing with lower back tightness but that injury didn't force him to miss time. The Achilles injury though, caused Conley to miss six games and the Grizzlies were concerned for a while that he might have to miss more. Before the Grizzlies played the New York Knicks on Saturday the team gave serious consideration to shutting Conley down for a longer period of time before they ultimately decided to leave him as day-to-day.
"We're hoping to be able to come up with a timetable in the next little bit, it's the right thing to do, especially for our fan base on what's going on and explain what we're looking at. He was playing very well for a couple of weeks there. It's unfortunate he keeps getting nicked up," said head coach Dave Joerger.
Conley was able to return to the floor on Monday afternoon against the New Orleans Pelicans a game that Memphis won, thanks in large part to Conley. Conley scored 15 points and added 10 assists in 27 minutes of action and it looks like not shutting him down was the right decision for the Grizzlies to make. Of course they are not out of the woods yet just because he looked good in one game as Achilles injuries can become very serious but the good news is that this is the first time Conley has had to deal with any sort of Achilles issue in his career.
Conley's minutes for the time being will likely be lower than his season average of 31.9 but the Grizzlies should be able to handle it just fine as his backup Mario Chalmers has played great since joining the team. Conley is set to become a free agent after this season and even though he isn't having his best year he will still likely be the best point guard on the market. Through 37 games Conley is averaging 15.1 points and 5.9 assists on just 41 percent shooting from the field.
