After what seems like an eternity, there is finally an update on Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez’s back injury and possible return date.
In speaking with The Athletic’s Shams Charania, Lopez says he is ramping up basketball activities, has done some on-court work, and has a target date in mind (although he didn’t specify in the video when that may be). The graphic in the video credits Charania as saying Lopez is “progressing toward a return in the coming weeks.”
Although it is a bit vague, it’s still an update nonetheless. We haven’t heard much on the Lopez injury front since he began missing games after opening night against the Brooklyn Nets. The 33-year-old has played just one game this season and his impact has been sorely missed, both on and off the court.
Reactions to Milwaukee Bucks center Brook Lopez’s injury update
The line “in the coming weeks” would suggest that Lopez won’t be back until at least early December. Back injuries are notoriously very tricky as they can linger for a while and can debilitate what you’re able to do in normal life, let alone playing professional basketball.
However, it’s good news that Lopez says his lower back has been “coming along positively” in the last couple of days to the point where he can do on-court activities.
This is the longest stretch of games Lopez has missed since coming to the Bucks after being relatively healthy and injury-free for his first three seasons with the team aside from some minor knocks that a big man picks up through the season.
It was expected that the Bucks would be a little more cautious with players like Lopez after a long, grueling championship run followed by a shortened offseason, but doing so because of a back injury was certainly not in the cards.
The Bucks have struggled to rebound the ball in Lopez’s absence, although they have found a bandaid solution by starting Bobby Portis and Giannis Antetokounmpo together. That has created a bigger problem for their frontcourt depth, however, and the Bucks are still being outrebounded to the heavens when only one of Antetokounmpo or Portis is on the floor.
Not having Lopez has also impacted their rim defense, which Lopez has been the backbone of in the last few seasons. Lopez has been one of the league’s very best rim defenders since coming to Milwaukee in the summer of 2018 and was named to the All-Defense FIrst-Team in 2019-20.
Offensively it will add another scoring option from behind the arc and in the post as well as allowing Bobby Portis to go back to an energy and scoring role off the bench, making his life easier as well.
The Bucks need Lopez back in a big way and it sounds as though that will be coming soon, but Lopez also needs to take as much time as he needs to get back to 100 percent because back problems are no joke.