Jimmy Butler and Manu Ginobili will return to action on Saturday
They were two of the queasiest injuries that the NBA has seen this year, but everyone’s all better now!
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San Antonio Spurs swingman Manu Ginobili is probable to play on Saturday night against Sacramento, after being told he would miss “at least a month” after undergoing surgery following, egh, “a testicular injury.”
Score one for the Spurs’ medical staff, though, as March 5 represents a month and a day since he was ruled out. That is to say, “at least a month.”
The same goes (for once) with the Chicago Bulls’ staff, as guard Jimmy Butler split the difference between the “three to four weeks” he’d be out with a frightening left knee strain suffered in Denver:
Butler will return for Saturday evening’s nationally televised Chicago game against the Houston Rockets, as well perpetually-playing-through-injury big man Taj Gibson. The Rockets and Bulls rank as perhaps the two biggest disappointment of the NBA’s 2015-16, as was the revelation that Butler (who leads the NBA in minutes per game) overruled Chicago’s medical staff when they suggested he sit his aching knee prior to the Denver fall.
Even the healthiest and well-rested of knees often come out of spills like Butler with torn ligaments or worse, so the overuse was directly the cause of Butler’s injury, there is a correlation between a fatigue and being unable withstand a traumatic knee injury. Again, Chicago is very lucky that it didn’t watch its best player go down with a season-ending knee tear for the third (or fourth, depending on how you reference Derrick Rose sitting out of all of 2012-13) time in five seasons.
With Chicago having gone 3-8 in the 11 games its All-Star missed, beleaguered coach Fred Hoiberg is clearly happy to have Butler back:
“Jimmy’s ready to go,” Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg said after Saturday’s shootaround. “He had a really good practice [Friday], came in this morning and made it through shootaround. So we’ll monitor him throughout the day, but as of right now he’s ready to go.”
[…]
“Jimmy wants to play 48 minutes,” Hoiberg said. “I told him that’s probably not realistic. But he wanted to get himself ready to go and to not have any restrictions. So we’ll see how he is. Obviously conditioning’s going to play a factor with how he’s feeling, but he’s a competitor, he’s a warrior and I know everybody in this organization is excited to have him back on the floor.”
Then there’s San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich:
I, um. Let’s move on.
On a per-minute basis, Ginobili can at times rank just behind James Harden and Butler when it comes to efficiency and excellence at the shooting guard spot. He’d rediscovered his three-point stroke (just under 38 percent) heading into 2015-16, his 14th season. The 38-year old is averaging 10 points and a combined 6.3 rebounds/assists, with a steal, in under 20 minutes a game. The Spurs went 11-1 in his absence.
That is to say, the Spurs circled the wagons. Patty Mills came off the bench to raise havoc, Kawhi Leonard increased his work load, second-year forward Kyle Anderson had his moments as the straw that served the drink, and the team didn’t even have to rely on its new pair of veteran buyout pickups: Andre Miller and Kevin Martin.
According to Rotowire, there’s isn’t a whole lot of precedence when it comes to NBA players returning from, egads, testicular trauma, but these are the Spurs. Ginobili will sit some games as the 52-9 team pretends that it doesn’t want to shoot for 70-wins, and Manu (who has yet to play more than 28 minutes in a contest this season). And, though we don’t doubt that this has been the most painful “at least a month” in Ginobili’s NBA life, those weeks spent away from the grind of travel and touring has to be a boon for this spring.
Butler’s case is different. The Bulls are fighting for a playoff spot, and they shot down Boston’s attempts to lure the All-Star to the Celtics with a package of compelling draft picks at the trade deadline, but they’re going to have to go slow with their star. The shooting guard is well on his way to leading the league in minutes per game for the second straight year, and he averaged 38.7 minutes a contest in 2013-14, when he didn’t take that crown.
Jimmy Butler has been allowed to figuratively walk past two different head coaches and a medical staff on his way to check into the game, and even though Chicago is currently a half-game out of the playoff bracket with 22 to play, they’re going to have to mind his ticks. They’re also going to have to find a way to make it so the height of Butler and Derrick Rose’s offensive chemistry isn’t a series of “you take yours, while I stand motionless on the other side of the floor, and then I’ll take mine while you adopt the same pose.”
That will be up to Hoiberg, the rookie coach that was brought into tackle a minutes problem and offensive woes, only to watch as Butler continues to rack up a heavy workload for the fifth-worst offense in the NBA.
Coach Popovich, in every conceivable way, as the opposite problem with Manu Ginobili and his Spurs. Perhaps the Bulls should bone up on more catfish anecdotes.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
