Lakers Injury Update: JJ Redick Calls Jarred Vanderbilt's Return 'Imminent'
Yesterday at 04:55 PM
The Los Angeles Lakers appear to finally be getting healthy as Jarred Vanderbilt has made progress in his rehab from offseason surgery.
Vanderbilt recently advanced to full on-court activities, a major step in his return to play schedule.
Head coach JJ Redick spoke about Vanderbilt’s progress after practicing on Friday and noted that he’s getting closer to making his 2024-25 season debut.
“Jarred was able to get two of the last three days, some live action with our South Bay team, which is I think really good for him. We want to get him more exposure to live play against professionals before we set a sort of target date. But it is imminent that he’ll be back with us in the next hopefully few weeks. But again, I think no setbacks, lots of progress. The conditioning, anyways who has played a sport and has been injured for an extended period of time, there’s the confidence that you have to build in your body, and he’s getting there. Each time we’ve exposed him to live play, it’s been better and better. So he’s close.”
While Redick seems optimistic that Vanderbilt can play sooner rather than later, he admitted he’s unsure whether or not he’ll see action in the G League or continue to use practices to ramp back up.
“We haven’t discussed that, to be honest with you. It was more about just getting live practices in with the G League team. Given our schedule of every-other-day this month, there probably isn’t an opportunity for live play although because of us not playing yesterday, we did get some live play today.”
Lastly, Redick left the door open for Vanderbilt to return during Los Angeles’ homestand in January.
“I don’t wanna commit to anything. That’s the hope. I don’t wanna commit to anything,” Redick said. “I think we’ve taken the approach going back to the start of the preseason, certainly in the offseason of playing the long game here. We just want him fully healthy and confident before we put him out on the court."
The Lakers have been extremely cautious with Vanderbilt who has a checkered injury history, though it finally feels like an end is in sight for his rehab.
Jarred Vanderbilt to be on minutes restriction when he returns
Any time a player has missed a significant amount of time, teams are generally OK with them slowly getting back up to speed. In this case, L.A. has already made the decision to put Jarred Vanderbilt on a minutes restriction when he’s back on the court.
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