The Utah Jazz are one step closer to being at full strength.
Mike Conley returned to the lineup on Friday in a 109-93 win over the Oklahoma City Thunder. The All-Star guard had missed nine consecutive games leading into Friday’s contest due to right hamstring tightness after reaggravating an already nagging hamstring injury that he’d been cautious with all season.
While Conley was all nerves and excitement about getting back onto the court with his teammates, he was limited to just 16 first-half minutes and never saw the court in the second half, which he said was probably a good thing and was more to protect him from himself than anything else.
As he found out after his short run on Friday, he nearly wore himself out before the game even started.
“I was working myself up and just so excited,” Conley said. “Like literally I do 1,000 squats and 1,000 lunges just getting ready for the game and find out that I wore myself out before I even get out there. Just kind of getting your whole game day routine down again, and all that just takes a few days.”
Jazz head coach Quin Snyder said that the intention was to play Conley even a little less than his 16 minutes, but that the minute restriction has a built in margin for error and that the number is likely to increase in the Jazz’s final game of the regular season on Sunday against the Sacramento Kings.
“We always try to structure those things in a way that’s very conservative and there’s flexibility that’s built in so we never feel like we’re putting anyone in jeopardy when they’re coming back,” Snyder said. “That’ll be the case again with Mike with a gradual ramp up, be it next game and then in the ensuing week getting ready for the playoffs.”
Though Conley didn’t play in the second half, the Jazz handled the Thunder with ease, and in Conley’s short time on the floor he scored 10 points, dished out three assists and grabbed two rebounds.
Having Conley back on the court, even for a short amount of time, signaled to the rest of the team that the Jazz are that much closer to full strength, and with the playoffs right around the corner, it couldn’t have happened at a better time.
After Sunday’s contest in Sacramento, the team can focus all of its energy on the postseason and making sure that Donovan Mitchell, who will have missed the final 16 games of the season after Sunday, gets healthy and comes back before the playoffs begin.
“It was great to have (Mike) back. We missed him and we miss Donovan too,” Rudy Gobert said on Friday. “Now that we’re going to get everybody back, I feel like we’re going to be fresh, and we’re going to be ready to go for the playoffs and try to achieve what we want to achieve.”
Just one game left.
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/3eOhEEt
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