Illinois men’s basketball coach Brad Underwood said athletic trainer Justin Games has had his hands full over the last two months.
Games has been working with sophomore forward David Mirković as he comes back from August surgery on his left foot. The Illini want to be cautious with the recovery of a player expected to be the centerpiece of their bid to return to a second straight Final Four.
But Mirković’s intensity challenges that sometimes.
“Not easy,” Underwood said Thursday during Big Ten basketball media days in Rosemont. “Mirk’s a competitor. He wants to do more. That’s his mentality is to work and to push through things. We’ve had to temper that a lot.
“But he’s worked awfully hard and he’s done everything he’s supposed to do, and we’ve just got to make sure that he keeps understanding we want this to be completely right when he comes back.”
Underwood said Mirković had a doctor’s appointment earlier this week and the 6-foot-9 Montenegrin is in “the natural progression that goes with a buildup” toward returning. Mirković has been doing work on the underwater and anti-gravity treadmills, but a foot injury requires regaining his conditioning.
So the Illini will continue to be intentional about his recovery, about 3½ weeks from their season opener and 5½ weeks from their marquee matchup at Duke.
“We want him to be pain-free,” Underwood said. “We want him to be in great shape when he comes back. And the last thing we want him to do is to have any reoccurring issues.”
Mirković is crucial to what the Illini want to do this season.
He joined Andrej Stojaković on Thursday as the faces of the Illini at media days. Keaton Wagler, whose sensational freshman season propelled Illinois to its first Final Four in 21 years, is preparing for the NBA season with the Los Angeles Clippers. Veterans Kylan Boswell and Ben Humrichous also are gone.
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This group is led by Mirković and Stojaković, who were named to the 11-player preseason All-Big Ten team. The announcements in the spring of their returns — along with those of twin centers Tomislav and Zvonimir Ivišić and wing Jake Davis — was big offseason news.
It’s a long way from where Mirković was a year ago, still new to the United States and college basketball.
“I came here to the other side of the world with something to prove, and that was my goal — to come here to prove something and to win as much as possible,” Mirković said. “But I would say now it’s different. Everyone knows who I am. Coaches expect a lot for me. They give me a lot of freedom and they expect us to win more now.”
Mirković got a taste of the spotlight as a freshman, when he averaged 13.3 points, eight rebounds and 2.6 assists. He had nine double-doubles, and his 297 rebounds set an Illinois freshman record, breaking the mark set by Kofi Cockburn.
His physical, versatile play made an impression on the court. And his big personality, captured in interviews and team videos, drew attention off it during the Illini’s NCAA Tournament run.
“I’m excited for the world to get to know him,” Underwood said. “We get to deal with him every day and he’s fun, and there’s days he’s a challenge because of his competitive spirit. But he is a joy to be around, just simply because the young man loves life.”
If Mirković’s recovery stays on course and he picks up where he left off last season, he could garner even more attention for an Illini team that likely will enter the season ranked in the top five.
But Mirković said he doesn’t feel the outside pressure that comes with that attention.
“The biggest pressure for us is to keep showing up, being an everyday guy and just being consistent as much as possible,” he said. “Listen to coaches and teammates and work. And I think we are in a good way.”
Mirković said the only good thing about his injury, which he suffered in a team workout, was the timing of it. He was able to get in a good offseason of work before sitting out. That included finding what he called “the perfect weight for my body.”
“Everything my brain imagined, I could do that, and my body followed on the court,” he said.
Underwood said Mirković improved his ballhandling — “tremendously with his left hand” — and called him “a matchup nightmare.” He expects to play Mirković at every position this year and noted that versatility allows the Illini to hunt favorable matchups for him.
“It’ll be our job to exploit that, and I can literally see him playing all five spots for us,” Underwood said. “We can play smaller. We can have a jumbo package with him as a point guard. So I like the versatility, and we’re going to base a lot of what we do around his ability to force a mismatch.”
Stojaković also saw an even better Mirković this summer.
“He carried himself a lot more maturely, I would say, with the approach to the game, his mindset coming into practice every day,” Stojaković said. “With the level of his play, a lot of the times when we were on opposite teams, not necessarily vocally but the way he was playing, he demanded of the others to match his intensity.”
Mirković said the last couple of months have given him “a different perspective” of the game from the sideline, and he thinks he got better even without working out on the court.
He also benefited from watching another player’s film.
Underwood suggested this offseason that Mirković watch highlights of Larry Bird, who retired before Mirković was born. Mirković knew Bird was an all-time great but said, “I didn’t know he was that good with being not athletic.” He studied how to pass and score against taller and faster opponents.
“I saw a lot of similarities in their game, the way they elevated other players,” Underwood said. “Larry always made teammates better. And Mirk has that ability. … I thought if he could pick something up there that maybe adds to his game or gives him a little confidence, then so be it.”