Mark Pope says Jayden Quaintance is inching closer to being a 'full-practice guy'

Jayden Quaintance is been "a ways away," as Mark Pope put it earlier this week, for what feels like a couple months now. "JQ is continue to make progress, but he's still a ways away from actually in game live action, but he's making tremendous progress," Pope said on his radio show Monday. Well, his comments on Friday suggest he may be very close to finally making his debut.

The 6-10 big man has been eased into practice very slowly, steadily making progress. On Friday, Pope said everyone on the team was on the practice floor for the first time ever, including the summer. ""Yesterday was a really significantly special day, because we actually had, it was a half court segment, and it was, it was semi controlled contact, but for the first time ever, including the summer we had all of our guys on the practice floor."

Now, Pope is hoping that it's matter of days or weeks and no longer months until we see Quaintance on the court in the blue and white.

"We're at the stages where he's not a full practice guy yet, but he's he's inching his way closer and closer to it," Pope said. "Yesterday was the first time he actually crossed half court with us, and it was in very limited reps. It was controlled. We actually stopped the drills short of where we normally go, but he actually did cross half court. I mean, he's had so many markers along the way, but that's another big one, and he responded really well, and so we're hoping that we're now into the like days and weeks more than we are the months."

How did Quaintance looked in his extended, but still limited run with the team in Thursday's practice? "We had some possessions yesterday where it was a competitive day, and where guys were racing in trying to make a play at the rim and JQ came out of nowhere and kind of sent it in (blocked it). There's still marks on the wall from him blocking shots. And even our guys that were shooting were kind of like, whoa. He's got a really special skill set."

Different timelines have been thrown around the last few weeks as to when exactly Quaintance will step on the floor officially, but one could assume it will be within the next two weeks. Late December, early January has been the speculated timeline for a while now, and that may actually end up right.