When Reggie Jackson tells Stan Van Gundy he’s ready to go, he’s going.
Jackson practiced without restriction on Monday for the first time since undergoing a platelet-rich plasma injection in his left knee on Oct. 10. They paired him with another point guard, so he took half the repetitions, and it wasn’t exactly a replica of game conditions.
But it was the closest Jackson’s gotten to the real thing yet. And it’s enough for Van Gundy to make the determination that it’s now Jackson’s call when he returns.
“I’ve seen him for a couple of weeks. He looks fine playing,” Van Gundy said after Monday’s practice. “Stamina is going to be an issue. I don’t think he could play 33 minutes a game right now. But whenever they tell me he’s ready to go and he tells me he’s ready to go in his mind, then he’ll go.”
Jackson indicated he’ll probably want another full-fledged practice session before he’s comfortable jumping into the fray. And that’s where the schedule comes into play. The Pistons have already played 18 games – only Indiana in the East has played as many – and they’ll get three games in the next four days. Thursday would typically be a day off after back-to-back games at Charlotte and Boston, but Van Gundy probably will cobble together something then to give Jackson another facsimile of an NBA game.
Could that mean Jackson would play Friday at Atlanta?
“I’m not counting on it,” Van Gundy said. “They’ll let me know, but I haven’t had any indication that would be the case.”
“Just trying to get some practices under my belt and from there just make a decision, but right now it’s just one day,” Jackson said. “I don’t think next game is the game to come back.”
But it’s close. And Jackson is optimistic that when he returns he’ll have only issues of rust and timing and not pain or anxiety about the ability of his knee to withstand the rigors of an NBA season.
“I think the treatment has gone tremendously well,” he said. “I’m happy. I’m feeling good.”
The Pistons carry an 8-10 record into the road trip. And while that might not be what Van Gundy would have chosen in an ideal scenario, it’s not far off what could have been realistically anticipated given the difficult of the early-season schedule and the jolt of losing Jackson one week into training camp.
“The good part is – and we need to continue to do it this week – I saw something yesterday: We’ve played the fourth-toughest schedule in the league,” he said. “We’ve already played 18 games. Cleveland and Milwaukee had played 14. That’s like one a week different in being able to get rest. We’ve played a lot of games, we’ve played a tough schedule and we’ve played all 18 games without our leading scorer and we’re still right there.
“We just need to focus on getting better. I don’t think you worry about standings until the last 20 games of the year. We’ve got another whole half of the season before we need to worry about that. We just need to play and keep getting better and try to hang close and see that when we get everybody together that we can put ourselves in position to make a run.”
They won’t have “everybody” together for a good long while yet, not with Reggie Bullock tearing his left knee meniscus last week – so if you’re keeping score for the Pistons, that’s two Reggies, two balky left knees. Bullock, Van Gundy said, is deciding between two specialists to consult for a second opinion and hopes to have a determination on a procedure sometime this week.
But the other Reggie’s return is now a matter of days, not weeks, away. And the Pistons, schedule challenges notwithstanding, haven’t had any of the goals set when they gathered for training camp two months ago moved beyond their reach yet.