Jusuf Nurkic, the Nuggets’ rookie center last season, underwent surgery Wednesday to repair a slight tear of the left patella tendon. He is expected to be sidelined three to four months.
The Nuggets called the surgery successful. The surgery was performed by Dr. Neal ElAttrache at the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopaedic Clinic in Los Angeles.
If all goes well, Nurkic would be able to have some sort of basketball activity near September. Training camp usually opens at the end of that month.
The surgery is a big blow for a player who hoped to use this summer to focus on improving his basketball skills and reshaping his body to better endure the long NBA season.
“I’m still a young guy, so I will work hard, and I can’t wait until next season,” Nurkic said after the Nuggets’ final regular-season game.
Nurkic played through knee pain in the second half of the season and also suffered an ankle sprain.
He was perhaps the biggest pleasant surprise on the roster. All anyone really knew about him coming into training camp a year ago was that he was huge — 6-foot-11, 280 pounds — and raw. At the time he was drafted, he had played basketball for just five years.
And then he burst onto the scene, making a big impression during training camp. Nurkic hadn’t initially figured into the Nuggets’ plans at center before the season, given the fact that Timofey Mozgov would start and JaVale McGee was expected to be available coming off the bench. McGee was coming off a surgically repaired stress fracture.
But McGee barely played, and Nurkic stepped past him into the backup role. Nurkic capped off a solid season by being named to the NBA’s all-rookie second team, averaging 6.9 points, 6.2 rebounds and 1.1 blocks per game.
Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dempseypost
