Last month, apparently, it looked like Festus Ezeli was tracking toward his Portland Trail Blazers debut. But then his left knee injury started acting up, and everything unraveled.
From CSNNW.com’s Jason Quick:
Ezeli suffered swelling in his left knee after he took part in two Blazers practices on Oct. 17 and Oct. 18, after which the Blazers have pulled back on his activity.
“I practiced, and that’s what happens sometimes – it reacts, swells up, you go back, regress and come back,’’ Ezeli said Tuesday night before the Blazers game with Phoenix.
Ezeli has spent the entire season, his first with the Blazers, on the shelf after having an “injection of bone marrow aspirate” in late August. He was supposed to have returned by now, following a six-week recovery period, but he’s right; these setbacks happen.
And they seem to happen to him an awful lot.
Ezeli missed 154 of a possible 246 regular-season contests during his final three seasons with the Golden State Warriors. That’s nearly two-thirds of their games. The Blazers took a flier on him over the summer, giving him a two-year, $14.7 million deal with a team option for 2017-18—a no-risk, high-reward gambit that they probably won’t ever totally regret. Ezeli, after all, can be a good rim-runner and paint-protector at full strength.
Will he ever be at full strength this season, though?
That’s the question that’ll most likely determine whether he’s back in Portland next season.
