It hasn’t been a healthy start to Adou Thiero’s NBA career.
He’s been dealing with a knee injury that started during his senior year at Arkansas, and it’s still impacted him now.
The Lakers’ rookie was unable to play in any Summer League games due to the injury, but at the time, the reports indicated he would be ready for training camp.
Thiero, during his media day availability, however, stated that he was still experiencing swelling in his knee and had not been cleared to play.
Dave McMenamin of ESPN
also reported that a source familiar with Thiero’s injury stated that the rookie is on track with the Lakers’ recovery timeline and has a week remaining in his rehab.
Even so, this is not the news you want to hear regarding Thiero if you are a Lakers fan.
He’s been dealing with this knee issue since February, and it’s clearly still impacting him.
Thiero missed eight straight games due to his hyperextended knee and only played in the final game of the season for Arkansas for a grand total of five minutes.
In the grand scheme, missing the first week of training camp isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it’s certainly concerning that this problem hasn’t gone away yet.
The Lakers are clearly high on Thiero. Los Angeles moved up twice in the draft to select him. Hopefully, this is just a slight setback and not the beginning of a long season where we have weeks and weeks of injury updates for the rookie with no basketball games to show for it.
Thiero averaged 15.1 points and 5.8 rebounds while shooting 54.5% from the field during his final year at Arkansas.
He played under head coach John Calipari during his entire collegiate year, first at Kentucky and then when Calipari went to Arkansas, Thiero went with him.
Clearly, Calipari loved his game, and that’s a good sign since Calipari has coached plenty of NBA players like Derrick Rose, DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis, to name a few.
Hopefully, Thiero will be ready to go very soon, and we’ll see if his athleticism can translate to the NBA level.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
