Veteran guard Landry Shamet will be available on Sunday for the Suns‘ game in Oklahoma City, the team officially confirmed today (via Twitter).
It will be the first time Shamet has been active for the Suns since January 16. He has missed the last two months due to a right foot injury. Prior to going down, the 26-year-old was averaging 9.5 points and 2.2 assists in 21.4 minutes per night and had made 37.7% of his three-point attempts in in 30 games.
Shamet has previously suffered stress fractures in both of his feet and said that this injury – which the Suns referred to as “right foot soreness” – could have had the same result if he had continued playing.
“Caught things right before a stress fracture,” Shamet said, per Duane Rankin of The Arizona Republic. “The buildup process of the discomfort and it’s sore, but you can kind of play through it and then it’s sore. Then it gets worse and worse and worse and worse and then it eventually it just breaks. Luckily we caught that early enough, which is a great thing. So that cleared up.”
Even after averting a stress fracture, Shamet dealt with nagging issues in the foot that delayed his return, as he explained on Saturday.
“Soft tissue, inflammation type situations,” Shamet said. “We worked through it. It was frustrating, very frustrating at times. Very gray. Not knowing what exactly the situation was, but our training staff did a good job of trying to identify things and collaborating with me and my team. Trying to figure it out. So we did a good job and here we are.”
According to head coach Monty Williams, Shamet won’t play a “crazy amount of minutes” immediately upon returning. The Suns have other options on the wing, including Terrence Ross and Damion Lee. Determining which of those players will be part of Phoenix’s playoff rotation will be a major consideration during the final three weeks of the regular season, notes Gerald Bourguet of PHNX Sports (via Twitter). In the meantime, Shamet’s teammates are just looking forward to seeing him back in action.
“Hell yeah, we’ve been waiting on it,” Devin Booker said, according to Rankin. “He’s been rehabbing. I always say how tough that can be. We want everybody healthy at the right time and it’s a good time to be coming back and getting ramped up.”