After a couple of days of speculation, we now have an update as it pertains to the meniscus injury suffered by New Orleans Pelicans forward Trey Murphy III on Tuesday.
It appears that the team has avoided the worst. Murphy will miss some time, but it won’t be most/all of the 2023-24 NBA Season (like some people initially feared).
ESPN Sources: Pelicans G/F Trey Murphy III underwent surgery to repair a slightly torn left meniscus and is expected to miss 10-to-12 weeks. That timeline could have him back in mid-November. https://t.co/C3y96Nrx9e
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) September 7, 2023
As the tweet above explains, Murphy only has a slightly torn left meniscus. This puts his recovery timetable at around 10-12 weeks. That’s still a significant amount of time to miss, but since we are in the off-season, that recovery time won’t be uber detrimental to the Pelicans’ season.
Taking a look at the calendar, if Murphy misses ten weeks, that will put his return date somewhere in the back half of the week of November 12th to 18th. If it takes 12 weeks, his return will be somewhere in the back half of the week of November 26th to December 2nd. Regardless, based on the information we have now, he won’t be missing much more than a month of the season (the Pelicans tip-off on October 25th).
It sucks that the team’s (arguably) third-best player won’t be available to start the season. But with how doom and gloom things appeared when we initially got the news, Murphy, the Pelicans, and all those with a rooting interest in the team can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief at the news that he’ll only miss a little over a month of the season.
One downside of Murphy missing a month’s worth of games (other than the team missing his overall impact) is that it might eliminate him from the Most Improved Player of the Year (MIP) conversation.
In late April, The Ringer’s Kevin O’Connor identified Murphy as someone who could be competing for that award in 2023-24. And given the improvement he displayed in Year Two, and all the potential his skills/size/athleticism affords him, O’Connor’s prediction made sense.
However, now that Murphy will be missing the beginning of the season, it seems as though he’s likely out of contention for the MIP award.