After playing the guessing game for much of the preseason, the Lakers finally released a firm update on Adou Thiero on Tuesday.
The second-round pick has “experienced improvement in his knee swelling” and will progress to doing on-court work, but won’t be reevaluated for another 2-3 weeks, the team said.
It’s been a wild, frustrating journey to get a real update on Thiero’s status this preseason. After not playing in Summer League, the Lakers said he’d be ready for training camp. He was, in fact, not ready for the start of training camp and has not played in any games yet. All that being said, he has still been on the court some this preseason, at least enough to impress head coach JJ Redick.
At least now, we have a concrete idea of where Thiero is in his recovery, even if it’s pretty far off from where the Lakers said he would be at this point. This probably shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the Lakers’ history of injury updates with this being the latest.
Thiero being multiple weeks away means he’s going to start well behind the curve in his rookie season and will be forced to play catch up. And considering he missed the preseason entirely, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him working with South Bay in the G League early in the year, too.
It’s frustrating to be at this point and to see him injured, but at least Thiero is improving and we know when to expect him back.
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