Neither the Dallas Mavericks management nor Dirk Nowitzki himself, knows when he will be able to return this season.
The first European-born player to receive the NBA's Most Valuable Player Award, Nowitzki, said that he could start running and shooting in two weeks, but he was not sure when he would start playing again for his team.
"Unfortunately, I tried, but I couldn't cut the time down," the Associtate Press reported Nowitzki saying. "I was obviously hoping to cut that time a lot shorter. It's been a frustrating time for me, especially watching and nothing I can really do.
"So there have been some hard days, some frustrating days....But I think now it's gotten better this last week or so and now I guess I'm seeing the end of the tunnel."
The Mavericks had asserted after Nowitzki's surgery on Oct. 19 that he would recover in at least six weeks.
"Once that goal is reached, then I can obviously think about playing again," he said. "But I think we're still far away from that."
Nowitzki is the first Maverick to be named in an All-NBA Team. "Dirk will get there. And we know he'll be back at some point. But nobody knows exactly when that's going to be," head coach Rick Carlisle said. "For right now, we've got to press forward with the guys we have and we've got to take up the slack in some of these areas where we're having some slippage and where we're losing ground."
It is a difficult situation for a player of his class, to sit on the sidelines. But Nowitzki also knows too early a return could have their own repercussions.
"I need to make sure everything's right before I come back," he said. "I can't rush. I'm hoping maybe after these two years to play a couple more years.
"So it would be the wrong thing now to push it and come back too early and maybe make something worse for the long term. So it's been learning to be patient the last couple weeks. It's not my favorite thing to do."
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