Grida Provides Positive Jolt for Hawks

After an injury ravaged pair of seasons Illawarra Hawks favourite Dan Grida played his first game of the 2022-23 campaign in round 11 against the Sydney Kings – and now he is ready for more.

The 24-year-old has been forced to bounce back from a number of severe injuries during his short time in the professional game, inclusing two ACL ruptures and a serious hamstring injury.

After playing just five minutes in his return game against the Kings, Grida says he's willing to ramp up his time on-court.

“I’m fully good to go, obviously they are going to restrict me a little bit and obviously I feel like I can play 40 minutes but that’s not the plan right now,” Grida said.

“I will just keep listening to these guys and however Jacob wants to play me I’m ready to go.

“I’m just super happy to be back here with the team. It’s been awesome.

“But it’s been a tough season for us as we’ve had a lot of turmoil this year with our imports coming and going, new guys coming in and out and not being available.”

Coach Jacob Jackomas said Grida’s return provided a jolt of positivity for the struggling Hawks, who sit bottom of the ladder with just two wins for the season so far.

“Regardless of the negatives we are going through right now, that kid has had injury after injury after injury. If he is playing basketball right now it has got to be a positive for this ball club leading into the future,” Jackomas said.

“So if we can get him in this thing where he can get this monkey off his back, and we have to do it slow because it is not normal.

“He has been breaking down at the last minute of practice, there has been a lot of that, so there is some very strict limitations on him which is obviously hard to do from the coaching side and frustrating for him and frustrating for his team-mates but for our ball club it is all positive long term.”

The Hawks face the Tasmania JackJumpers on Thursday night at 7:30pm AEDT.