{"id":128459,"date":"2025-03-13T12:37:33","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T16:37:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=128459"},"modified":"2025-03-13T12:37:33","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T16:37:33","slug":"washington-wizards-young-star-bilal-coulibaly-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/13\/washington-wizards-young-star-bilal-coulibaly-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"Wizards Young Star Suffers Injury, May Miss Rest of Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After a bad season last year, the 2024-25 campaign has not been great for the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/11\/khris-middleton-wizards-future\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Washington Wizards<\/a> either. With a month left in the regular season, the Wizards own a 13-51 record. This is the worst record in the league. While it has looked slightly better for the Wizards since acquiring <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/middlkh01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-13_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Khris Middleton<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/s\/smartma01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-13_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Marcus Smart<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/05\/trade-grades-kuzma-to-the-bucks-middleton-to-the-wizards\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">last month&#8217;s trade deadline<\/a>, the Wizards still rank as the worst team in the NBA. Unfortunately for them, as if their season was not bad enough already, they recently made a disappointing announcement. According to HoopsHype&#8217;s Michael Scotto, the Wizards announced that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/c\/coulibi01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-13_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bilal Coulibaly<\/a> will miss 4-to-6 weeks due to a right hamstring injury.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Washington Wizards guard Bilal Coulibaly will be out approximately 4-6 weeks with a right hamstring injury, team says.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Michael Scotto (@MikeAScotto) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MikeAScotto\/status\/1900219426768630058?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 13, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Since the Wizards&#8217; season ends in a month, and they have no shot at making a postseason appearance, there is a chance Coulibaly has already played his final game of the season.<\/p>\n<h2>Washington Wizards&#8217; Bilal Coulibaly Suffers Injury, May Miss Rest of Season<\/h2>\n<h3>Bilal Coulibaly Was In the Midst of a Sophomore Jump<\/h3>\n<p>After a solid rookie campaign last year, Coulibaly was enjoying an improved sophomore season. Through 59 games (all starts) this season, the French native averaged 12.3 points, 5 rebounds, 3.4 assists, and 1.3 steals. In an upsetting season for the Wizards, Couliably&#8217;s progression was a good silver lining.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Coulibaly <a href=\"https:\/\/rg.org\/news\/basketball\/bilal-coulibaly-continuing-to-learn-as-he-welcomes-more-responsibility-with-wizards\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">spoke about his growth<\/a>. He cited his work ethic and growing confidence as major reasons for his progression.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWork a lot and just confidence [have led to that growth],\u201d Coulibaly said echoing Relph\u2019s words. \u201cConfidence from my teammates, confidence from myself, coaches giving me the ball. I know I can create, so it\u2019s just me and my aggressiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPhysically, it&#8217;s just like getting ready, practicing more than you even play in the game,\u201d Coulibaly told RG. \u201cMentally, talking to the coach, he&#8217;d be telling me before games that I&#8217;m about to play a lot, so I&#8217;m ready. I&#8217;d say during the summer, it was a lot of the conditioning. During the season, too. Even when we&#8217;re playing 5-on-5, just giving everything and doing everything to get more in shape, I&#8217;d say.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If this is the end of Coulibaly&#8217;s second season in the league, Wizards fans will have to wait a little bit to see him back on the court.<\/p>\n<h3>The Last Word<\/h3>\n<p>Though the Wizards are not likely to make a playoff appearance anytime soon, there is still a lot to like about the team. In addition to Coulibaly, the Wizards have some intriguing young players in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/s\/sarral01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-13_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Alex Sarr<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/c\/carrica01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-03-13_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bub Carrington<\/a>. Furthermore, there are reasons to be excited about Middleton and Smart in Washington for a full season. For the rest of the season, it will be interesting to see how the Wizards play without Coulibaly. However, in any case, most of the team&#8217;s focus will be shifted to next season, which is when they will look to make strides and inch closer to postseason contention.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Reggie Hildred-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After a bad season last year, the 2024-25 campaign has not been great for the Washington Wizards either. With a month left in the regular season, the Wizards own a 13-51 record. This is the worst record in the league. While it has looked slightly better for the Wizards since acquiring Khris Middleton and Marcus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4631,"featured_media":128461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,2,62,3,18],"tags":[4769,4745],"class_list":["post-128459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-featured","category-nba","category-news","category-wizards","tag-bilal-coulibaly","tag-nba-injuries"],"modified_by":"Elie Deglaoui","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4631"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128476,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128459\/revisions\/128476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}