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In the last 20 years, no NBA player Jimmy Butler’s age or older has returned from a torn ACL. Even in other team sports, it’s nearly impossible to find a comparable success story.
That doesn’t mean the 36-year-old Warriors wing can’t return to the court — just that the challenges he faces are practically unparalleled.
Even with Giannis Antetokounmpo suddenly more available than ever, the Warriors have continued to signal their commitment to building around Butler and Steph Curry rather than package Butler’s $54 million salary in a trade, a source indicated. With or without Antetokounmpo, the organization is anticipating that Butler will return next season after a year of ACL rehabilitation.
Given the lack of precedent, that position is bold. To understand just how bold, The Standard spoke with Dr. Laura Moore, an assistant attending orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan. The conversation offered up some optimism for Butler but no certainty on his recovery.
“He’s in a better situation than most 36-year-olds,” Moore said. “But everything gets harder when you get older. It’s harder. You’re probably at a little higher risk for stiffness, you’re at a higher risk for persistent swelling, you’re at a little bit of higher risk for aches and pains. And as you get older, it’s always harder to recover muscle mass. So he’s not a typical 36-year-old, but everything gets harder when you’re older.”
Butler will have every resource — physical therapists, recovery technology, athletic trainers managing swelling — available to him to achieve the best outcome possible. Still, he is “at kind of the tail-end of the bell curve for ACL injuries,” Moore said.
The reason tearing the anterior cruciate ligament is such a serious injury is that it’s responsible for the vast majority of stability in the knee. It connects the femur to the tibia and is the biggest of the four knee ligaments (the others are the MCL, PCL, and LCL).
Butler tore his ACL on Jan. 19, when he landed awkwardly while receiving an entry pass from Brandin Podziemski. He has yet to undergo surgery, as the swelling needs to subside first.
The surgical options are straightforward. ACL reconstruction is standard for elite athletes with goals of a full recovery.
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The procedure involves borrowing a tendon or ligament from elsewhere on the patient’s body; most often, the knee cap. There are also graft options from the hamstring or quad, but those techniques are either rare or out of favor.
There’s one variation Butler could consider, Moore said, though it’s more common in patients who still have open growth plates. Lateral extra-articular tenodesis, or LET, is an old procedure that has been repurposed recently because of evidence suggesting it reduces re-tear rates. It involves attaching part of the IT band to a different part of the femur instead of letting it flow up the side of the thigh.
Butler has torn his meniscus and sprained his MCL before, though those injuries won’t factor into his operation unless there’s damage beyond the ACL.
Regardless of the surgical procedure, Butler is facing a yearlong recovery.
“Recovering from any injury like this is hard, right?” Moore said. “Regardless of how old you are, there’s probably a minimum of nine months that they’re putting in. And they’re putting in daily work, daily rehab, trying to get back to the same level they’re at.”
De’Anthony Melton, Butler’s teammate, missed exactly one year from the date of his ACL reconstruction surgery in December 2024. Seeing Butler go down brought back bad memories.
The tough part, Melton said, starts after surgery.
“Every day really is a grind,” he said. “Mentally, that’s the biggest hit you’ll probably take. But someone like him, he’s so mentally strong and thinking about the positive things, I think it’s going to be all right.”
Melton is a full decade younger than Butler. Players in their mid-20s come back from torn ACLs all the time.
Butler doesn’t have the same reassurance.
According to In Street Clothes (opens in new tab), Chris Andersen is the only other player since 2005 to tear his ACL after turning 36. He never played another game.
Kawhi Leonard missed his full season at age 30 with a torn ACL. He has come back and is playing at an elite level this season, at 34, but has dealt with chronic lower-body injuries.
Kyrie Irving’s torn ACL recovery is ongoing. What the guard looks like upon returning could serve as a closer test case, though Irving is three years younger than Butler.
Other sports have closer parallels. Tom Brady tore his ACL in 2008, then returned to play 14 more seasons. But comparing anyone to Brady is tough given how anomalous his career was and how he took care of his body. He ran for twice as many first downs at 44 than he did at 24, a mark of his unique conditioning that improved as he got older.
Skiers often deal with knee issues. Lindsey Vonn famously tore her ACL multiple times in 2013 and 2014, when she was in her late 20s. In December, at 41, she became the oldest winner of the downhill skiing World Cup.
Skiing, of course, is not basketball. Soccer is more similar, with an emphasis on endurance, short bursts of sprinting, cutting, and pivoting.
The closest comparison point in soccer is Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who tore his right ACL in 2017 at age 36. He beat the recovery timetable to return in roughly seven months and remained an elite player for years. Then, in 2022, he tore his left ACL and played without it for sixth months, undergoing weekly drainings to alleviate swelling while also taking daily painkilling injections. That year, he helped AC Milan secure the league title. He missed the following eight months after surgery before returning, though his second comeback lasted only four matches.
What Butler is attempting to do has never been done on the court. But that doesn’t mean it’s never been done, period.
“If you look across the board, there are definitely people who do it,” Moore said. “If you’re talking Tom Brady or Zlatan Ibrahimovic — they were, like, really motivated dudes, right? And so, yeah, maybe it’s a question of personality type. If anyone can do it, I bet Jimmy can.”