2 min read • February 15, 2022
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Nuggets' general manager Tim Connelly gave fans a jolt of excitement late last week when he said on a local radio show that young stars Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. will be physically cleared sometime this season, opening the door to a potential return ahead of the playoffs.
The optimism for a return is warranted, says our ProBasketballDocs, and a return is probable, but don't expect Murray to immediately return to form.
The 24-year-old tore his left ACL on a drive to the basket on April 12, 2021, so the timeline – 10 to 12 months – is right in the window of a full recovery and potential return, but that doesn't guarantee when he will be back and ready to play.
Every player's recovery process is different, and it is not as simple as flipping a switch. A player can be at 90% back to form and take another 6 months to get that last 10%.
Murray, similar to Derrick Rose a decade ago, is a dynamic playmaker on both sides of the ball, meaning there are more components to his knee returning to competition that will require a gradual approach to re-calibration.
He can absolutely return to the Nuggets before the playoffs, which start April 16, but he will do so on a limited capacity this season, as he will unfortunately not be back to his former self until the 2022-23 season.
We see players can return quickly, as Klay Thompson has this season, in certain skill aspects such as shooting and playmaking, as long as they stay ready in the waiting and ramp-up period.
Thompson, for instance, is posting .456/.429/.938 shooting splits and dishing out what would be a career-high 3.7 assists per game in the last 9 contests, 2-and-a-half years removed from tearing his left ACL.
There is warranted hope for an eventual full revitalization for Murray: a 2021 Stanford Medicine study of NBA players who suffer ACL tears since 1980 found that players returning from the injury perform just as well as uninjured players, and they do not have to reduce or adjust their playing style.
This will be good news for Murray, who is an elite driver and scorer inside the paint, in addition to being an above-average shooter behind the arc (at least while playing next to Nikola Jokic).
In his absence, rookie Bones Hyland has emerged as a competent point guard, scoring 10.3 points with 3.8 rebounds and 2.7 assists in his last 15 games.
Denver is 32-25 this season and firmly in the 6th seed, which would help them avoid the play-in tournament. They have gotten there on the back of 2021 MVP Nikola Jokic, who is putting up one of the most statistically impressive seasons of all time with 25.8 points, 13.7 rebounds, 7.9 assists and 1.4 steals, all of which lead the team.
The last time Jokic and Murray played a whole season together, Murray averaged 26.5 points and 6.6 assists per game on their way to a Western Finals berth.
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