Anthony Edwards and Jaren Jackson Jr. will miss weeks with knee injuries, and Mo Bamba is the Utah add

Two early-round fantasy picks went onto the injury report with knee diagnoses on Tuesday, and our projections now expect them to miss about 45 games between them. Anthony Edwards will have an arthroscopic procedure on his right knee and is expected to miss up to two months, according to Shams Charania of ESPN, as CBS Minnesota reported, and Jaren Jackson Jr. has a torn MCL in his right knee that will keep him out for six to eight weeks without surgery, according to Charania and Tim MacMahon of ESPN, which the Jazz then confirmed by saying he will be reevaluated in six weeks. Neither story arrived on a quiet night: Edwards scored 47 points in 41 minutes in Monday's loss at Cleveland, and Jackson was hurt early in the second quarter of Utah's loss to Memphis the same night, when Ty Jerome fell into his knee on a drive, as Hoops Rumors summarized from the ESPN reporting.

The decision for both sets of managers is the same, and it is not a hard one, because neither player's value on the nights he plays has changed and our projections now simply count fewer of those nights. The harder question is who replaces them, and for that our boards and the box scores disagree in Minnesota and agree in Utah, where Mo Bamba played 29 minutes in his season debut once Jackson and Lauri Markkanen had both left the game.

The points ranks are from our projections board under ESPN's standard scoring and the 9-cat ranks from our 9-cat board, comparing the nightly run before Tuesday's news with the run after it.

Edwards is a hold, and the Wolves' minutes are not yet anyone's

Edwards had opened the season with 45 points in Miami and 47 in Cleveland around two quieter nights, an average of 51.3 fantasy points a game under ESPN's standard scoring over his first four games, and our projection of 47.9 a game on the nights he plays has not moved. What moved is the count: our projections now expect about 48 games from him rather than 74, which is enough to take him from 8th on our points board to 31st and from 7th on our 9-cat board to 29th, while the analysts' consensus still has him 9th and 6th. CBS Minnesota noted that he played a career-low 61 games last season with trouble in both knees, and that a two-month absence would keep him out until around Christmas. If your league has an injured reserve slot he belongs in it, and in a league without one he is still a hold, because a top-ten player for the second half of the season is worth more than any replacement you can find on the wire this week. Our preseason look at LaMelo Ball in Minnesota is worth rereading for the managers who drafted the Wolves' other guard.

The situations layer in our projections hands an injured starter's minutes to the healthy players behind him, and for Edwards it gave them to Isaiah Evans, whose projection rose from 8.0 to 20.7 minutes a night. Evans has played eight minutes in Minnesota's first four games, according to ESPN's box scores, so that lift is our model reading the depth chart rather than anything the Wolves have shown, and it is not a reason to add him yet. The layer moves minutes and holds every player's rates, so it does not raise Ball, Jaden McDaniels or Ayo Dosunmu, who will take more of the shots in practice. Watch who starts on Wednesday against Golden State before spending a waiver claim on any of them.

Jackson's MCL, and Bamba's debut

Jackson had averaged 16.3 points in his four games, with five blocks, and he is projected at 37.7 fantasy points a game when healthy, which leaves him 80th on both of our boards once the missed games are counted, against 47th and 33rd in the consensus. The same advice applies: an injured reserve slot if you have one, and a hold in most twelve-team leagues if you do not, since a torn MCL that needs no surgery comes with a firmer timeline than most knee injuries. Our preseason story on Jackson in Utah priced the games risk after last season's knee surgery, and this injury is to the other knee.

Utah's center rotation was already thin. Jusuf Nurkic is out with a partial plantar plate tear in his right foot, as we covered in who plays center in Utah without Nurkic, and Jaxson Hayes missed Monday's game with right shoulder soreness and is listed as questionable for Wednesday against San Antonio, as is Markkanen with a sprained right wrist the Jazz are calling day to day, according to ESPN's injury report. That left Bamba to play 29 minutes off the bench on Monday, and he made 7 of 8 shots for 14 points, seven rebounds and four blocks, a 43-point night under ESPN's standard scoring, with a dunk that pulled Utah within one in the final minute, according to ESPN's recap. Our projections raised him from 10.4 to 14.1 minutes a night, and Kyle Filipowski by 3.5 minutes, for Jackson's absence.

What to do

Move Edwards and Jackson to injured reserve, or hold both on the bench in a league without a slot. Add Bamba in 9-cat leagues of fourteen teams or more for the blocks, and in twelve-team leagues as a short-term streamer while Hayes is out, knowing that our projections still expect only about 38 games from him and that his minutes will shrink once Hayes and Nurkic return. Leave the Wolves' guards alone until Minnesota's lineup without Edwards is known, which the box score from Wednesday night will tell you more about than any projection can.

Every player in this story is on the fantasy basketball rankings and the 2026-27 projections, and the NBA depth charts show where each one stands in his team’s rotation tonight.