Rondae Hollis-Jefferson suffered a non-displaced fracture of the posterior talus in his right ankle in practice this past week, which will require surgery.
For those of you that don’t have a medical degree: that’s bad. Worse, it doesn’t seem like Hollis-Jefferson will be back any time soon.
That’s if you believe Lionel Hollins, who let slip that he expects Hollis-Jefferson to be out at least ten weeks.
“He was coming on. He was getting experience, it hurts us from what he provided for us for the team,” Hollins said. “For his development, to have to sit out ten weeks, and not really be engaged with the team and we’ll be that much further along when he comes back, the season will be much further along, and he has to get engaged again and get caught up. So, disappointing.”
It needs to be clear: that’s not an official timetable. It’s not definitive by any means. Anything more specific won’t come until after the surgery. But Hollins also didn’t come up with that number out of nowhere, and it falls in line with the usual recovery time from a posterior talus surgery.
Ten weeks from this week would put Hollis-Jefferson’s return time at just around the All-Star Break. If he came back and played right away, he’d miss 34 games over those ten weeks.
Hollis-Jefferson started in 14 games prior to the injury, averaging 5.2 points and 6.1 rebounds per game, and the team only started winning games after Hollins put him in the starting lineup.
