The dunk would have been a nice highlight, if Vlatko Cancar had only stuck the landing. Instead, he has rewatched it solely for educational purposes, at the behest of a former strength and conditioning coach back home in Slovenia.
“He was part of our national team in 2017. We call him ‘Professor,’” Cancar said. “I watched it just so I learn how to land next time. He tells me how to land. Not on straight leg and stiff leg. Try to land more soft. Yeah, he’s on my (butt) about that.”
Cancar, the Nuggets reserve forward beloved by diehard fans and by Nikola Jokic, has finally been cleared to play 106 days after another season of professional basketball was derailed by misfortune. He underwent arthroscopic knee surgery in early December, two weeks after that dunk sent a jolt of pain through his left leg during a game in Memphis. He had already missed the 2023-24 season due to a torn ACL in the same knee.
Those two weeks were spent surveying medical opinions. Surgery was inevitable, though waiting for the end of the season remained a possibility. But before Cancar chose the arthroscopic clean-up, one of his more dramatic options was a procedure that’s eerily familiar to Colorado sports fans — a cartilage transplant, which has kept Avalanche captain Gabe Landeskog sidelined for almost three full years.
“To me, it was never an option because it’s a longer period. You have to rehab for 12 months,” Cancar told The Denver Post. “We kind of sat down and talked this through, the whole training staff. … The coaches and everybody knew what I’ve been through before, so they were like, ‘Whatever you do, we’re going to support you.’ And then after, I think it was just an easy decision for me (to have surgery immediately), the reason being I knew I was going to get back healthy during the season rather than the offseason. Because back home, you’re not really in focus mode that much.”
Resources were a factor, too. Cancar knew that rehabbing through the season in Denver would be more advantageous because he wouldn’t have the same access to an NBA training staff in Slovenia, if he chose to wait until summer.
Riley Williams, the New York-based orthopedic surgeon who performed Cancar’s ACL reconstruction, did the arthroscopic surgery, which uses a camera to examine the inside of the knee and diagnose problems through a small incision. Cancar says that Williams shaved off a bit of cartilage but also discovered lingering scar tissue from the ACL injury.
“When I was playing, I didn’t really notice it,” Cancar said. “But once he went in, he was like, it took him more time to get rid of the scar tissue than actually to do the cartilage shave. … It’s a good thing and a bad thing that I went under the knife, because he cleared a lot of scar tissue, but at the same time set me back a little bit more.
“Everything went smooth. I wanted to be back before, but I think (the team) said to be a little bit more patient and give me a little bit more time. Now I just have to build tolerance, because not pain, but soreness and stiffness now is going to be there a long time.”
Cancar has now been inactive due to injury for 136 regular-season games in the last two seasons. He was in the Nuggets’ rotation for a portion of their 2022-23 championship season, appearing in 60 games and scoring in double figures 13 times. But he suffered the initial torn ACL during a World Cup preparation game for Slovenia in August 2023.
Since then, his role in Denver has been almost entirely intangible, as a good-natured locker room personality and friend to Jokic. He was playing backup center when he re-injured the knee — and playing well, as coach Michael Malone has often lamented.
“It was a pretty aggressive procedure that he went through, and the goal with that was to come back and be able to play this season — which you love where his head is at while making that decision,” Malone said recently.
Cancar is likely to remain a deep-bench option for the Nuggets the remainder of the season. But with his other team, he’s an essential commodity on the court. He and Lakers star Luka Doncic are the only Slovenians in the NBA right now. Cancar’s first game action after the ACL injury was at Slovenia’s 2024 Olympic qualifying tournament in Greece, where Nuggets general manager Calvin Booth had traveled in part to watch Cancar and later sign him to a new veteran minimum extension.
Cancar struggled in that tournament, and Slovenia wasn’t able to qualify for the 12-team field in Paris.
“I could tell that I was missing a lot of practice. Before, when I was healthy and even if I didn’t play (for the Nuggets), we would practice and play upstairs all the time,” he said. “And I would be in game shape, and I would be ready to go play (with) national team. But this, because I was lacking so much practice, when I (went to Greece), I was feeling that I didn’t have the half a step I would usually have.”
He’s slowly regaining that rhythm and stamina now, even if his reps are confined to the Nuggets’ practice gym. The latest four-month setback hasn’t been tough on him mentally, he says, because he’s confident in his work ethic. But in the meantime, he’s had ample encouragement anyway, both from his Denver teammates and from Doncic.
“We always reach out to each other whenever there’s like an injury or some type of thing. He says he’s always there to help if I need anything, ever,” Cancar said. “You know those kinds of friendships where you can just continue where you left off. You can not see each other for one month, two months, three months, and just, it’s normal.”
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