Bojan Bogdanovic not sure he is ready for the start of the season, but happy with how the wrist surgery has progressed

So instead, one of the team’s PR officers had some posters of the Croatian sharpshooter printed and hung on the elevator doors on the team’s floor in the Gran Destino hotel – so that every time they came or went, his face was there to greet them.

“We used to say hello to him constantly,” coach Quin Snyder recalled with a laugh in a Zoom phone call with the media Tuesday afternoon. “It’s nice to be able to greet him in person.”

In fact, Bogdanovic has already been training in the team’s facilities in the past few weeks, before the start of Tuesday’s retreat, when players could start conducting 1-on-0 individual training with assistant coaches.

And he can’t wait to get back to playing.

“I missed being with those guys and the feeling for the match, especially as I missed the playoffs, the most exciting part of the part of the season,” Bogdanovic told the media in his virtual interview Tuesday night. “It’s been a long recovery, the first time I’ve been in this position, the first time I’ve had a serious injury. So it was very hard for me mentally. “

Bogdanovic said he was playing painfully for most of the season without knowing the extent of the injury until a medical exam during the hiatus finally revealed a torn ligament in his right wrist.

He struggled with deciding how to proceed, knowing there were plans in the works by the NBA to potentially resume the season at some point. After speaking with “every single player and every single member of the coaching and front office staff”, a consensus was reached that he should proceed with the intervention immediately in the hopes of having a fully healthy squad for next season. rather than trying to play it, undergo surgery later on and lose most of the 2020-21 campaign.

After the procedure, Bogdanovic was put in a cast and then braced for two months, after which pins were removed from his wrist. Then came a couple of months of mobility exercises designed to start bringing him back to normal, which he said he was getting close to.

Executive Vice President Dennis Lindsey told media on Monday that the team will be evaluating the striker next week to determine his readiness for full contact training. Bogdanovic added that while he is eager to return, he still has no clarity as to whether he will be ready to go when the regular season kicks off on December 22.

“We will need to reevaluate my situation when we start with some contact practice. So I can’t tell you exactly if I’ll be ready or not for the start of the season, ”he said. “I have to start going 1v1 and start playing 5v5, a contact game, and then I’ll see how my wrist reacts. But I’m really happy to be in the position I am in right now. “

Teammate Rudy Gobert expressed enthusiasm on Tuesday night for what Jazz will be capable of when they reprise the boy who averaged 20.2 points per game last year with 41.4% 3-pointers. points.

“Bojan is a very good 3-point shooter, he can create, he’s a great scorer – especially in friction situations,” said Gobert. “When you don’t have that boyfriend, especially in a lot of close situations, it makes a difference.”

Of course, Bogey didn’t just focus on rehabilitation. While he’s been shooting a lot of shots over the arc recently, he also said he’s been working on improving his footwork so he can become a better defender and rebounder as well.

And beyond that, there was another wrinkle Snyder threw in his way.

“We will try to use it more on the pole this year. I think it’s an area, if you’re looking through the season, where he can be even more effective, “the coach said.”… He can score in many different ways. And it also affects other guys’ ability to score, in particular. Donovan [Mitchell] in pick-and-roll, or Donovan in isolation. And even with his height, sometimes the older guys – you feel like they’re protected and they’re not because they can just shoot you. “