Brandon Roy stepped away from his stall in the Trail Blazers locker room, walked two spaces over and extended his right hand.
“Bayless,” he said, smirking. “Jerryd Bayless. How you doing? I'm Brandon Roy. Whatcha been up to? Playing games or something?”
After missing eight of the last nine games with a strained right hamstring, it only feels like Roy needed to reintroduce himself to teammates.
The Trail Blazers All-Star guard was evaluated by doctors and tested hamstring on Monday and the results were not overwhelmingly positive. Roy will not travel with the Blazers to Utah on Wednesday and is questionable for Thursday night’s game at the Rose Garden against the San Antonio Spurs.
It’s looking more and more likely that Roy will not return until Saturday night, when the Blazers host the Los Angeles Lakers.
“I was hoping to come back Wednesday,” Roy said. “But now it’s Thursday maybe and Saturday hopefully. I still don’t want to put a day on it because it’s not feeling to that point yet. I hope to know more in a couple days. It’s just really frustrating.”
Roy went through some light shooting and half court drills on Sunday. But when he tried full-court sprinting, he instantly had to stop.
“I ran those sprints and I was like, ‘Ohhhhh, wait a minute.’ I don’t want to pull this again and as soon as I said it hurt, it was like, ‘All right, we’re done.’ So I basically I just have to go off of how I feel. And the better I feel, we just try to do more and more.”
Roy said he still feels lingering tightness in the same spot in his hamstring when he tries to push his leg during drills and running. Roy had Platelet Rich Plasma injected into his leg on Jan. 22 in Seattle in a cutting-edge medical procedure designed to speed up the healing process in his tender hamstring. At the time, doctors told Roy they wanted him to sit for two weeks.
That point would come on Friday, the day before the Blazers host the Lakers.
“This is about a week and half right now,” Roy said. “So they’re still saying it’s on track. But, again, they say hamstrings are something that the person has to decide whether to play.”
Blazers coach Nate McMillan typically makes his players practice at least once after an extended layoff before returning from an injury. Assuming Roy does not practice Tuesday, it seems unlikely he would play on Thursday — although McMillan hasn’t entirely ruled it out just yet.
“I think I have to talk to the doctors, I have to talk to (athletic trainer) Jay (Jensen),” McMillan said. “We’ll have to see what he’s doing with his rehabbing and (any) running that he may be doing by himself. So we’ll see.”
