Wesley Matthews was in the midst of a tremendous year with the Portland Trail Blazers last season until he suffered a torn Achilles on March 5th. Matthews is currently rehabbing the injury after signing with the Dallas Mavericks this offseason and has reportedly said that he believes he will be back for the opening game of the season, according to Tim Cato of SB Nation.
Matthews is known around the league as one of the hardest working players in the NBA so if anybody were going to come back that quick from a torn Achilles it would be him, but seven and a half months is pretty fast to come back from what is considered one of the worst injuries you can have. Achilles injuries typically take six-to-nine months' worth of rehab in order to be fully healed so if Matthews were to come back from the injury for the start of the season it would be in that window.
"I'm gonna say I'll be ready by opening night. Anybody that knows me in this league knows that I'm going to give 150 percent; you're going to have to kill me to stop me from going. Only thing that I can do is how I attack my rehab," said Matthews.
While Matthews is extremely confident he will be back by opening day the Mavericks may take a more conservative approach. Head coach Rick Carlisle has said that he would like to bring Matthews along slowly because they made a long-term investment in him with a four year $70 million contract. The Mavericks would rather him come along slowly and be healthy for the duration of the contract as opposed to coming back too quickly and re-injuring himself.
In 60 games with the Blazers last year Matthews averaged 15.9 points and 3.7 rebounds per game while making 45 percent of his field goal attempts and 39 percent of his threes. Matthews will replace Monta Ellis in the Mavericks starting lineup and will bring a much better two-way presence than Ellis did. If it was just up to Matthews he would likely be playing in game one for the Mavericks but it will be interesting to see if Carlisle and the organization hold him back a bit.
