Raptors' Scottie Barnes & Jakob Poeltl Share Recovery Update

Scottie Barnes and Jakob Poeltl say they're progressing well following surgery as the Toronto Raptors season comes to an end

Feb 4, 2024; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA; Toronto Raptors center Jakob Poeltl (19) talks to forward Scottie Barnes / Alonzo Adams-USA TODAY Sports

Scottie Barnes wanted to get back out there.

Had the season not ended the way it did for the Toronto Raptors, there’s a reasonable chance he would have made a return this year. He’s still not quite 100 percent following surgery to repair a fracture in his left hand, but he’s pretty close.

“I feel good. Been doing workouts. I wanted to play, wanted to get back on the floor, but precautionary issues,” Barnes said Monday.

Barnes admitted he does still have some swelling in his left hand, but he’s been managing without a brace for a while now and had resumed basketball activities with his left hand prior to the end of the season.

“It was a freak accident,” said Barnes who was kicked in the hand by Immanuel Quickley while trying to contest a layup from Jonathan Kuminga. “God’s got a plan for me. Just last month been hurt these last 20 games or so. The only thing that’s been frustrating has been watching us losing and not being able to be on the floor with the guys.”

The expectation is Barnes will make a full recovery in the next little while and be ready to go for a full summer’s worth of offseason training with the team.

As for Jakob Poeltl, it sounds like the Austrian center is a little further behind as he continues to work his way back from surgery to fix a sprained ligament in his left hand.

“I feel all right. Recovery has been going pretty well but at the same time it’s definitely been a little bit of a frustrating process for me,” Poeltl said.

Poeltl played in just 50 games this year, the fewest of his career, as he battled an ankle sprain through most of January before eventually a sprain in his left hand cost him the rest of the season.

Without him, Toronto was never the same. The Raptors went 4-28 when Poeltl was sidelined and looked essentially like the league’s worst team without the 7-foot big man.

“Us not playing well during those times and then just being stuck on the sidelines was a little bit frustrating,” Poeltl said. “But now overall I’m feeling good. The recovery process is going well, so I’m just happy about that.”

Poeltl is still working to get his full range of motion back and he’s planning to take a cautious approach to avoid rushing into anything. It’s still to be determined if he’ll be limited at all over the summer, but the expectation is he should be healthy for the start of next season.

“I want everything to go properly before I really get back to work,” he said. “So I’m probably going to be sticking to what I’ve been doing this recovery process until I get the go-ahead.”