Philadelphia 76ers point guard Michael Carter-Williams still hasn't returned to full-contact drills after undergoing surgery to repair the labrum in his right shoulder in May, and he almost certainly won't be ready to take the floor when the regular season rolls around in two weeks.
Nobody knows when Michael Carter-Williams’ shoulder injury is supposed to heal
Carter-Williams had surgery on his right shoulder in May, and he’s still not that close to returning to the court.
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Carter-Williams missed just a single game last season once the calendar turned to 2014, and he was named NBA Rookie of the Year on May 5. A day later, the Sixers announced that their prized point guard had undergone surgery on his shoulder.
The release said there was no timetable for Carter-Williams’ return, but there’s typically a two-to-four month timeline for recovery from labrum surgery. And while that May 6 release on the Sixers’ site didn’t give an official timeline, apparently the Sixers shared the two-to-four month projection at some point:
Original #Sixers release projected MCW would miss two to four months.
— Tom Moore (@tmoore76ers) October 13, 2014 It has been over five months since Carter-Williams went under the knife, and it would seem his recovery is well behind schedule. However, the point guard said the exact opposite when giving a status update on Monday, according to Moore:
“I’m plenty ahead of schedule,” Carter-Williams said after Monday afternoon’s practice.
Carter-Williams said the two-to-four-month timeline was simply "not true at all" and the original diagnosis was a six-to-nine-month recovery. Carter-Williams went on to say there's still no specific date set for his return, and Sixers head coach Brett Brown said last week the point guard was "a ways away" from participating in full-contact drills.
Carter-Williams has been doing shooting drills in addition to non-contact activity, and he’s really itching to get back. He even stated that he feels 100 percent, but he also noted that it’s not his call and that he’s currently acting on “doctor’s orders.”
It appears there was some kind of disconnect regarding how serious this injury was. Perhaps the Sixers are just being extremely cautious, like they were with Nerlens Noel’s knee, but it’s weird to suggest one timetable for recovery when it’s actually a much longer one. At this point, let’s just hope Carter-Williams is healthy and back on the court as soon as possible so the Sixers can be a bit more watchable.
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