ORLANDO, Fla. — Jonathan Isaac will miss the remainder of the Orlando Magic’s 2021-22 season, the team announced Tuesday morning.
Isaac hasn’t played since tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the “bubble” on Aug. 2, 2020, after the league returned from a four-month hiatus because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Isaac missed the entire 2020-21 season because of the injury, making this season the second consecutive one Isaac will miss because of the knee injury.
With only 12 games left after Tuesday’s home game against the Brooklyn Nets, Isaac was running out of time to ramp up his rehab in anticipation of playing.
“Our performance staff likes to have a long ramp-up [period] to return to actual play and that includes a long period of unrestricted access,” said Jeff Weltman, the Magic’s president of basketball operations. “We’re just running out of time on the back end with less than a month left in the season to realistically expect that to happen now.”
Isaac said he and the team had been having conversations for the last week about what it’d take for him to possibly return to the court before he was ruled out.
“It doesn’t seem feasible,” he added, “with how much time we have left.”
Isaac and Weltman said there hadn’t been a setback — aggravating the left knee or any other injury — during Isaac’s rehab, with Isaac adding, “In terms of building the muscle around my [left] knee, it’s taken a bit longer than we’ve wanted it to.”
Isaac’s taken part in halfcourt contact drills with coaches for “a little while”, according to Weltman, but hasn’t progressed to fullcourt contact situations — a key step in the rehab process. The Magic aren’t sure when Isaac will take that step.
Throughout Isaac’s recovery, the Magic haven’t put a timeline on when he’d be expected to reach certain benchmarks in his rehab, something that most NBA teams have moved away from in recent years.
“This is another example of why you just do the work everyday and kind of let the work and timeline unroll at its own pace,” Weltman said. “That’s the right way to do it.”
Isaac, the sixth pick in the 2017 draft, is in the first season of a 4-year, $69.6 million extension he signed with the Magic in December 2020.
He had just recovered from a major left knee injury he sustained in January 2020 before tearing his ACL during the league’s restart.
Isaac will finish this season having only played 34 of 227 possible regular-season games since the start of the 2019-20 season.
“Seeing the guys play night in and night out, being on the court working out every day has been grueling,” he said. “I want nothing more than to be on the court with my teammates.”
The Magic hope Isaac will be ready to return by the start of the 2022-23 season in mid-October — nearly 26 months after he tore his ACL. Training camp is expected to start at the end of September.
“I know there’s frustration from the perspective of when’s Jonathan going to return,” Weltman said. “The fans want him back and everybody wants him to come back, but I promise you the most frustrated person is Jonathan because he’s working hard every day. The daily grind and focus he’s exhibiting [are] unparalleled.
“We don’t look at it as frustration. We look at it as work and whatever we have to do to get Jonathan back on the court, that’s what we’re going to do. And that’s what he’s going to do.”
