Jonas Jerebko spent Tuesday afternoon serving ice cream at Campus Martius Park in Detroit as part of a charity appearance for the Salvation Army. In between scooping cones of Moose Tracks (photo evidence, insert your own Greg Monroe joke in the comments), he spoke with Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press about his contract status:
As for where he will be playing next season, the Pistons likely won't let the second-year forward walk as they can match any offer he receives. But Jerebko, 24, realizes the business aspect of the game.
"We had a good talk, and we'll see what happens," Jerebko said of president Joe Dumars. "Like I told you before, the NBA is a business, and I'm looking forward to start playing; I just want to play basketball. So hopefully it's here, but you never know."
Not exactly breaking much any news, but hey, actual news is hard to come by this time of year. Jerebko also indicated that he was "100 percent" recovered from last year's Achilles' injury, although Arnie Kander offered a slightly more conservative estimate.
From Keith Langlois of Pistons.com:
Jerebko, Kander says, is about at 85 to 90 percent along in his recovery with the final 10 percent really just about regaining strength in the muscles of the right leg and building endurance of the muscles along with the strength.
"You have to relate strength and endurance," he said. "How long can they maintain that strength before the leg fatigues? Of course, it will fatigue quicker than the non-surgical side. So that’s why we don’t dunk. I want to see how high you can finish without dunking. A dunk is just over the rim, but a high finish is up here" – Kander holds his arm a foot above a tabletop – "over the rim. I want to see it off your left, off your right, and look to see if he’s starting to drop down in his jump. To watch him, you don’t see much difference with either side. You have to look closely."
Later in the article, Kander spoke a bit more in depth about how much Jereko has bulked up:
Jerebko has bulked up to 240 pounds, about 15 more than he played at during his rookie season, and Kander says it’s "true weight."
"That’s a good weight for him and he’s maintaining it," he said. "It’s one thing to get to 240 and then you start to run and you go to 230. We’ve been able to maintain that with running, which to me is true weight. You want to build endurance into the muscle strength. All along, we’ve been running and holding that weight. He’ll lose a little when we get into training camp. Not a lot, though, because this is a modified training camp – an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes of pretty intense, hard movements. We’re just giving him a little bit more recovery time."