Matisse Thybulle out indefinitely with a knee injury

Well this stinks. In the Sixers’ quest for a championship this season, there have certainly been a fair amount of ups and downs. The team is 21-10, having dropped three of their last four games. They momentarily held the two seed in the East before a three game skid featuring a pair of zone defenses that tormented the Sixers. The sky is not falling. Of course they can make some adjustments. But they’re going to have to do so without their electric rookie and defensive phenom Matisse Thybulle for at least a couple of weeks.

According to Serena Winters of NBCS-Philadelphia, the former Washington Huskie has a bone bruise and sprain of the right knee following a hyperextension he suffered last night when his legs got tangled up with Troy Brown Jr. of the Wizards.

Thybulle is shooting a blistering hot 46.3% from downtown this season and because he’s been so consistent from beyond the arc recently, it’s allowed him to play more minutes and really terrorize opposing perimeter players. No passing lane is safe when he’s around. He is 18th in the league in steals per game with 1.4, but is only playing 17.6 minutes per contest. That rate is absolutely elite and will be sorely missed.

This will likely mean more minutes for Furkan Korkmaz. Korkmaz has actually already seen an uptick in minutes recently because of all the zone defense the team has faced. Coach Brett Brown wants to unleash the Istanbul native even more than he has. It will likely mean more minutes for James Ennis and perhaps even Trey Burke who has received more work lately and played fairly well.

But on the whole, it’s bad news for Thybulle and the Sixers. And it continues a tradition of at least some bad things happening to Sixer rookies. Hopefully he is back in the lineup very soon and this doesn’t derail his momentum.