Heat guard out for season with ACL injury after unfortunate in-game slip

Miami Heat guard Dru Smith suffered some absolutely rotten luck during Wednesday’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Smith was injured in the second quarter of the contest while attempting to close out on a Max Strus corner three-point attempt. The momentum from Smith’s jump carried him into the Cleveland bench area, and he slipped on what appeared to be a whiteboard or a piece of paper with statistics on it that a Cavs assistant had left underneath his chair on the bench. The slip carried Smith’s leg into a lower portion of flooring below the raised court, and his right knee twisted awkwardly as a result.

Here is the video.

Tough, tough break for Dru Smith, who gets injured on the contest of Strus' shot after slipping on a piece of stat sheet on the floor and slides to a lower platform on the Cavs' bench. Hopefully he's okay. pic.twitter.com/7mrutBFxGN

— Naveen Ganglani (@naveenganglani) November 23, 2023

The Heat announced on Saturday that Smith suffered a third-degree ACL sprain on the play and is now out for the season.

UPDATE: Dru Smith has been diagnosed with a 3rd degree right ACL sprain. He will be out for the remainder of the season.

— Miami HEAT (@MiamiHEAT) November 24, 2023

That is awful news for the 25-year-old Smith, an undrafted player working hard to make his way up the ladder in Miami. While he was only averaging 4.3 points and 1.6 assists per contest this season, Smith had been seeing increased opportunity of late as a result of the ankle injury to Tyler Herro.

You can’t even really blame the Cavs assistant there since the whiteboard or paper that Smith slipped on was far out of bounds and tucked underneath a chair. Though slipping injuries do happen in the NBA, Smith’s mishap (in terms of injury severity and just pure bad luck) had to be the worst one yet.