White men can’t jump if their ankles aren’t fully healed, Christian Braun learned recently.
So as he prepared to return from a left ankle sprain for the second time in as many months, he paid more attention this time to his bounce as a barometer.
“I think the biggest (factor) was, ‘Can I jump in the air?'” the Nuggets guard said. “Obviously, they do all their tests (on an injury) and they do a really good job, but truthfully, I couldn’t jump. And if everybody has seen me play, I jump off my left leg a ton. So I’m just navigating, like, ‘Before I come back this next time, I need to make sure I can jump. I can run full speed and I can jump.’ It sounds really elementary and really basic, but that’s the truth. The explosion just wasn’t there.”
Braun, who has spent this season dealing with a serious injury for the first time in his basketball career, has been back in the lineup for four games after Denver’s matchup with Cleveland on Monday. He expects “a long process” as he tries to grow fully comfortable on the court again, but he’s already feeling more like himself than he did in early January, when he initially returned from a seven-week, 23-game absence.
“I learned the first time I came back, I wasn’t ready,” Braun said. “… It wasn’t that we rushed or anything like that. I think that I wanted to come back really, really bad and just be part of the team. Be back on the court. But clearly wasn’t ready. I think everybody could see that. Everybody knew that.”
Braun suffered the initial injury last Nov. 13 in a bizarre play involving Cavaliers guard James Harden, who was playing for the Clippers at the time. Braun was guarding Harden when the 2017-18 league MVP stepped on Braun’s right foot, causing him to momentarily lose balance and take an awkward step that injured the opposite ankle.
The Nuggets estimated that Braun would be out for six weeks in a news release. He returned Jan. 4 at Brooklyn. Then after visibly struggling for three games, he went back on the shelf and missed another 12 consecutive contests.
He believes that his lack of injury history made it more difficult to feel 100% certain he was physically prepared for a return. The ramp-up process was unfamiliar to his body.
“That was a big part of it,” he said. “They kind of put up whatever six- to eight-week label on my injury, which I don’t quite think that’s what it was, and I think everybody knew that. But it was a little more severe than I think initially I anticipated. I really wanted to come back at the six-week mark. Obviously, I have to tell them how I feel. And I’ve never been injured before, so I didn’t really understand that — I didn’t know when I was there (at six weeks) that it was gonna get better. I just kind of was at a spot where, ‘OK, well those guys are out there battling. I want to be out there battling with them.’
“I got to the point where I could at least move. I could run. I wasn’t explosive enough. I couldn’t jump off the ground. That’s not a good recipe to play in an NBA game. And I learned that. I realized that.”
Braun was a plus-15 across his first three games back. His scoring via off-ball motion hasn’t been as constant an ingredient in Denver’s success this season, but he put together a relatively complete performance last Wednesday against the Knicks, posting six points, seven rebounds and six assists in 43 minutes. He also came through in his first high-stakes situation in months, sinking a pair of free throws with 0.3 seconds left in overtime to tie up New York.
“Rapid improvement (with) I think confidence in his body,” coach David Adelman said. “The explosion’s slowly coming back. For CB, I think this is a great time to push himself two of these next three nights, and then get a break again. And hopefully that just continues to heal for him.”
“Navigating the feeling of coming back, it’s kind of my first real adversity I think on the basketball court,” Braun added, “which I think is good for me. And I think I’ll grow from it.”
Adelman was pleased to see Braun looking comfortable going to his Euro step in transition last Saturday, when the 24-year-old scored another 10 points in a win over the Bulls. It was a momentary reminder that Braun is one of the most athletic players on Denver’s roster, when he feels like himself. Pushing the pace is how he set himself apart offensively last year, earning a $125 million pay day.
Before that lucrative extension goes into effect, he’s spending the last season of his rookie contract getting a valuable education in how to properly rehab and return from an injury.
“It just took me a second to realize that maybe I wasn’t ready, maybe I need to step back and take a little more time,” he said. “… So I think now that we’ve got to a spot where I’ve kind of realized, you know, listen to my body, those things — I need to do a better job of that.”
