Inside The Huskies

Ex-Husky Thybulle Returns to NBA With Flourish After Near Year-Long Layoff

After missing the first 66 games this season for Portland, the defensive specialist saved a victory.

Dan Raley

Ex-Husky Matisse Thybulle (4) made his season debut for the Portland Trail Blazers after a long injury layoff.
Ex-Husky Matisse Thybulle (4) made his season debut for the Portland Trail Blazers after a long injury layoff. / Jaime Valdez-Imagn Images

Matisse Thybulle went 13 days shy of a full year without playing in an NBA basketball game. Returned in the Portland Trail Blazers' 68th outing of the season. It was like he was never gone.

To be sure, the people in Portland were overjoyed to have him back on Sunday night as he played a key role in the Blazers' 105-102 victory over the Toronto Raptors, this after going through an agonizingly long layoff because of a troublesome ankle injury.

Consider the stat line for this former University of Washington player against the Raptors: 6 minutes, 2 steals, 1 block, 2 rebounds.

The shot block came on the final play of the night with the 6-foot-5 Thybulle cleanly swatting away a potentially game-tying 3-pointer by Orlando Robinson, who was five inches taller, to preserve the Trail Blazers' win.

Welcome back.

"For sure, but when you come back after 68 games of not playing, you want to just be solid and do your job right, but I guess I couldn't help myself," Thybulle said of his shot-blocking effort.

It had been a particularly distressing situation for Thybulle, who watched the Trail Blazers (29-39) play nearly 80 percent of his sixth season in the NBA without him.

"Obviously, being a basketball player again is great," he told reporters last week. "It’s been tough to be a basketball player who can’t play basketball."

Thybulle made his season debut with 2:51 remaining in the third quarter and immediately helped Portland whittle a 15-point deficit down to five.

Inserted at the end of the game, he deflected Robinson's shot by coming from the side as they stood at the top of the key, and cheering Trail Blazers fans let him know how happy they were that he had had returned.

Thybulle, who's originally from Issaquah, Washington, played for the Huskies in 2016-19 and was twice named Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year.

He was drafted in the first round, as the 20th overall pick, in 2019 by the Boston Celtics and traded to the Philadelphia 76ers the following day. He was shipped to Portland during the 2022-23 season, bringing him back to the Pacific Northwest.

For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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