SALT LAKE CITY — A scenario that has played out all too often over the last four years will once again be happening this fall, as Dante Exum will be coming off an injury that forced him to miss a bunch of games last season.
This time, Exum will be coming back from a partially torn patellar tendon in his right knee, an injury he suffered in March in just his third game back following a 25-game absence because of a severe ankle sprain and bone bruise.
In all, Exum appeared in just 42 games last season. Previously, he played in just 14 regular season games during the 2017-2018 campaign and missed all of the 2015-2016 season because of injury.
“The recovery has been good,” the typically optimistic Exum said on Monday at the Jazz’s annual media day. “It’s been a long offseason. It’s not how anyone wants to spend their offseason, rehabbing, but I’m feeling really good. I can’t complain.”
That being said, the team is using major caution in bringing Exum back from an injury that generally has a long recovery period. The Aussie has participated during the first week of Utah’s training camp, but he said it’s going to be a “day-to-day, week-to-week thing” in determining his availability to play.
“As much as anything, praying for good health, and then from there we’ll let timetables be dictated,” Jazz executive vice president of basketball operations Dennis Lindsey said Monday.
Lindsey added that Exum has passed everything as far as doctors are concerned, and now it’s a matter of getting his knee to where he can perform at a high level. The sixth-year former lottery pick is moving “very well,” but still needs to pass some balance testing and will have limited contact during camp.
Final calls for Exum’s readiness to play will be made by team vice president of performance health care Mike Elliott.
“I don’t want to box us in as far as timetables go because the most honest answer is we don’t know,” Lindsey said. “It will be symptoms-based, but everything’s pointed in the right direction. We haven’t really had any setbacks. We’re going to be very conservative. It’s a long season.”
Once Exum is fully ready to play, whenever that may be, his role is primed to be quite different from what it has been in the past. When the sixth-year guard arrived in the league as the fifth overall pick of the 2014 NBA draft, he was adamant that he was strictly a point guard despite his 6-foot-6 stature, a stance he maintained for a number of years.
Before his latest injuries, he started to play off the ball more, however, and Lindsey said right now that the organization is penciling him in as “just a player.”
At this point, Exum is just fine with that.
“One of the biggest goals for me coming into this season is having an open mind,” he said. “Obviously we’ve got a really deep team, and where I fit into that is game-dependent. I can guard (point guards to small forwards), I can play the point. It’s what I’ve been able to do, but I can also run the floor.
“It’s going to be a competitive team, and I’m trying to fight for minutes. If that’s at the one, that’s at the two, that’s at the three even, I’m going to accept it and I’m going to go in and try to star in that.”
Despite the fact he’s been so limited, Exum remains one of the Jazz’s best on-ball defenders in a Western Conference that is stacked with talented guards and wings, but he’s also looking forward to a different role within the offense that will come by virtue of playing off the ball more.
“That’s a part of my game that I really want to add this year, is being a threat in transition,” he said. “Wherever I can find those minutes and find those advantages that I bring, I’m going to.”
As the offseason wound down, Exum quite frequently posted videos of himself on social media working out, and he said his upper body has gotten a lot stronger since for a few months, lifting weights was really the most he could do. Besides that, though, he said a number of players have told him that merely getting stronger could go a long way in helping him get through a full season successfully.
“That was something I just tried to add, just be strong and be able to withstand not just 82 games,” he said, “but over 100 games and all the practices that come along with it.”