Report: Anthony Davis will start ramping up this week, attempt return in ‘a couple weeks’

Anthony Davis will reportedly begin his first substantial steps toward his return to the court for the Lakers this week. After suffering a fractured bone spur and a stress reaction in his navicular bone at the end of December, Davis will begin his ramp-up process this week with the hopes of returning to the court in the coming weeks, as reported by Dave McMenamin of ESPN.

The pain in Anthony Davis’ right foot continues to subside and the Los Angeles Lakers’ star plans to begin the ramp up process to return to play when the team returns to L.A. this week, league sources told ESPN.

McMenamin also provided a few details of what that process will look like in his full story:

The ramp up process will involve aquatic pool workouts and running on an altered-gravity treadmill to keep the big man’s full weight off his foot while it continues to heal, sources said.

There is optimism within the Lakers that the ramp up process could only take a couple weeks before Davis could start penciling a potential return to game action, sources told ESPN.

Kyle Goon of the O.C. Register provided even more details on Monday night:

The latest update on Davis prior to this was that he was slated to do his first basketball activities to test the foot this week. Davis suffered the injury in the Lakers’ win over the Nuggets on Dec. 16, a game he left at halftime. He has not seen the court since that game. The Lakers have gone 7-5 in the 12 games he has missed during that span.

After initial silence surrounding his injury that raised plenty of concern, he was diagnosed with a stress reaction injury in his foot that would sideline him indefinitely. Davis eventually spoke to the media and provided his own update on the matter, noting that the pain in his foot had “subsided tremendously” in the weeks that had followed his initial injury.

That appears to have been a good omen as reports also indicated AD was showing “encouraging” signs of progress in his rehab. All things considered, it feels like, so far, things have gone well both in terms of diagnosis and recovery for Davis.

Now, though, will be the telling part as his potential return to the court will indicate whether he will have a shorter recovery and avoid surgery or have a setback and perhaps a much longer recovery. The Lakers do have a lengthy stretch of home games on their schedule as eight of their next nine games are in Los Angeles (dating to Jan. 25), with their only road trip being to Portland.

In short, this feels like the critical part of rehab for AD in determining how quickly he can get back on the court and potentially help the Lakers make a playoff push.

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