Year two is considered crucial to the development of any young player in the NBA, let alone a big man. This makes James Wiseman’s absence for so far the entirety of the 2021-22 season all the more concerning.
Wiseman, 20, had his rookie season end early due to surgery to repair a torn meniscus, but was supposed to return shortly after the start of this season, at the very least around the time that Klay Thompson was due back.
Yet four months and over the half the season have come and gone, and Wiseman still has yet to be cleared for contact after his timetable was set back in mid-December, when he received a minor arthroscopic surgery to relieve swelling in his injured knee.
A lost season now feels possible. Warriors reporter Connor Letourneau of the San Francisco Chronicle joined Papa & Lund on Monday and projected when we might see the big man this season.
“He has not been cleared for contact yet,” Letourneau said on KNBR. “Saturday was a non-contact practice. So it was significant that he participated in a full-team practice, but maybe not as significant as a lot of people would assume just because it was non-contact. The big thing that I’m waiting for is whenever he does get cleared for contact. We’ve been waiting on that for quite a long time now.
“I get asked every week, when is he going to get cleared, and I’ve been saying since November ‘It should happen any day now.’ But there’s been some setbacks here and there and it still hasn’t happened.
“Until he gets cleared it’s hard to really guess when he could come back to games because he has to get cleared for 3-on-3 work, then 4-on-4, then 5-on-5. I would think they would want to get a least a couple 5-on-5 scrimmages in with him before he returns to games. But at this point, you can’t expect him to come back until probably early-to-mid March, maybe later. At that point, you’re looking at only a matter of weeks until the playoffs, and he probably won’t be a factor in the playoffs.”
For those keeping track at home, the NBA playoffs are due to begin on April 16. If Wiseman can’t return before the month of March ends, it’s hard to imagine him being thrown into the Warriors rotation during the postseason, especially with the team looking like one of the best teams in the NBA without him.
“If he doesn’t get cleared soon, you are looking at a completely lost season for him,” Letourneau continued. “It’s kind of getting to urgency point at this point.”
Listen to the full interview below. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Murph & Mac weekdays from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.