Michigan basketball's Olivier Nkamhoua on brutal season: 'Held out as long as I could'

EVANSTON, Ill. — Olivier Nkamhoua wasn't 48 hours removed from season-ending wrist surgery, yet there he was, 800 miles from where he’d gone under the knife, with one arm in the air celebrating his teammates.

Nkamhoua, left arm wrapped in a sling, took free throws with his one available hand in pregame warmups then watched from the sideline as Michigan basketball's rough season continued cratering with a 76-62 loss at Northwestern.

On Wednesday morning, the program announced he would miss the rest of the season.

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On Thursday night, he told reporters that the shutdown was hardly a surprise to those in the Wolverines locker room. Since suffering a freak injury in practice in late december, Nkamhoua had had the nickname "The One-arm Bandit."

"When we came back from winter break before McNeese, at practice I tweaked my wrist but I thought I'd just sprained it," Nkamhoua said. "I just kept playing normally, thinking it was just a sprain, but once it kept popping out of place even past the first couple of weeks, that can't really be a sprain really anymore.

"We'd already got X-rays.. ... But after a couple weeks and the swelling had gone down, we got MRIs and the MRI showed that I'd torn — I'm not sure if I'm saying it correctly — (the) 'scapholunate' ligament. Basically how it was explained to me: The ACL of my wrist."

His hand was simply caught on a box out, which has happened before, so Nkamhoua thought he'd be able to play through it. And he did, for a while.

He scored in double figures in each of the next six games, and grabbed at least six rebounds in five of those, before he slowly started to fade. After averaging more than 16 points a game in his first 18, Nkamhoua never reached 15 in any of his final eight games, shooting under 50% in five of them.

It became clear that the 6-foot-9, 235-pound grad transfer wasn't getting healthier.

He continued to feel his wrist pop in and out of place; meetings with trainer Chris Williams and other medical experts, convinced the Finnish standout it would be best long-term if he didn't play through it.

"Because it was my left hand you guys probably didn’t realize because I was kind of hiding it, I wanted to play and be with my team as much as I could," he said. "But once we got second and third opinions, each new piece of new information kind of pointed the same way and led to me having surgery.

"I had to make a decision for myself and my future. I held out as long as I could, played as many games as I could, but I was going to put my future and my own self in jeopardy if I had kept playing."

Nkamhoua is out of eligibility, which means his time at Michigan is over.

He had a career year after departing Tennessee, averaging 14.8 points and 7.1 rebounds while shooting 51.2% from the floor. Voted a captain, Nkamhoua's impact shouldn't be defined by the Wolverines' underwhelming season, his coach said.

"I just pray for Olivier," Juwan Howard said Thursday evening. "For him to get back to 110%, not 100, 110% because what he gave us this year, it was special. I know he's disappointed in how his grad-transfer senior year ended, but he has a lot of basketball ahead of him, and I'm going to be cheering him on like no other."

Howard is not the only one.

Nimari Burnett, a fellow transfer, scored 15 points Thursday. He relates to Nkamhoua on several levels. He, too, departed the SEC searching for a storybook ending in Ann Arbor. But this chapter only ends in tragedy.

Burnett broke his wrist last season at Alabama, so he knows the strain requred to come back from such an injury. But what he appreciates most from Nkamhoua is his continued leadership.

"First of all, he's a great guy. I mean, after this season is all said and done, I'll keep in contact with him because of who he is as a person," Burnett said. "As soon as he was here (at the arena), I don't remember who said it, but he was surprised to see him here, I was like, 'Me, too.'

"He could have been wherever dealing with his wrist, but it shows who he is as a person and his character. So we thank him for coming here and you know, supporting us."

Nkamhoua scheduled his surgery in New York even before appearing in U-M's game Saturday vs. Michigan State, which he knew would be his final time in the maize and blue. That was hard not just for him, but the entire team. But he knew there was little option.

"The doctors told me the longer I wait, the harder the surgery would get, the less chance of success," he said. "Also it keeps pushing back my recovery time further and further, then I’m taking away from my summer."

Nkamhoua's next steps? Rather than head back to his hometown, or starting training for a potential pro career, he plans to finish out the semester and season with his teammates, according to a source with knowledge of the situation.

"I'm just trying to be with the team, be supportive," he said. "Even though it was a one-year thing for me, I still feel like I was part of this program, and I feel very appreciative that I was allowed to come here and be welcomed in with open arms.

"Everybody I've met, you guys, from media to everyone on the street, has been very welcoming to me. I really appreciated my year here, but it is very unfortunate it had to go for me this year."

A basketball talent certainly, Nkamhoua's impact on the Wolverines goes beyond his points per game (in which he's second on the roster thus far) or his rebounds per game (also second-most). He also showed leadership from the time he was elected captain soon after arriving in Ann Arbor in the summer. Early in the season, when the Wolverines were winning games with mop-up opportunities for walk-ons, he wasn't afraid to review how they'd played.

Now, he's reviewing his final college season.

"I've never had to go through a year like this playing basketball," he said. "Having to go through it now, it's something I'll take with me, something to learn from and gives me new perspective.

"My message to my teammates has been, and will keep being, 'Just play for yourself, play to have fun, play for the love of the game, play to win and take everything you can from it, because it can go away whenever.' "

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Olivier Nkamhoua’s won't stop cheering for Michigan basketball