Why is Kentucky’s Kam Williams in a walking boot? Here’s the Wildcat’s prognosis
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Williams is in a walking boot as the eight-week summer session begins.
- Williams suffered a Jones fracture Jan. 21 and had surgery Jan. 23.
- His father says sitting out now will better prepare him for the 2026-27 season.
The first Kentucky men’s basketball practice of the eight-week summer session took place Monday in the Joe Craft Center.
Kam Williams was not on the court with his fellow Cats.
Instead, Williams — a 6-foot-8 guard and key returnee from last season’s team — remains relegated to a walking boot as his new teammates begin early preparations for the 2026-27 season.
His absence from Monday’s practice immediately led to consternation within a UK fan base that has seen Mark Pope’s first two years as head coach derailed by injuries, including the broken foot that Williams suffered in January, hindering the final two months of his season.
Williams’ father spoke to the Herald-Leader at length Tuesday morning about his son’s current situation and said the 20-year-old’s injury status is not cause for long-term worry.
Greg Williams Sr. said that his son was diagnosed with a Jones fracture after leaving UK’s 85-80 victory over Texas in Rupp Arena on Jan. 21. He said Williams met with doctors the following day and had surgery on his foot Jan. 23, less than 48 hours after the injury occurred.
“Basically, with that injury, it just needs time to heal. When you look it up, it’ll say three to four months,” Williams Sr. said.
That’s three to four months of no activity, the player’s father said, noting that Williams decided to try and come back for UK’s postseason run instead, knowing full well at the time that such a decision could greatly delay a full recovery.
Following the Jan. 23 surgery, Williams Sr. said his son did “nothing” for only about three weeks and then began to ramp back up in an attempt to return to the court. He made that return in Kentucky’s SEC Tournament opener against LSU on March 11 — exactly seven weeks after breaking his foot — and played a total of 37 minutes across three games in three days of the league tournament.
The following week, Williams hit a key 3-pointer in UK’s overtime victory over Santa Clara in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and then scored five points in the Cats’ season-ending loss to Iowa State in the second round. He logged a total of 29 minutes in those two games.
Williams Sr. said his son went through four to five hours of physical therapy after each of those postseason games but wanted to contribute to UK’s tournament run and was willing to delay a full recovery in order to do that. He also said that Williams continued to perform some basketball activities after the season was finished.
“And so what he’s been doing is trying to do a little bit at a time,” he said. “But what that’s done is slowed his recovery. So what he has to do is make a choice between wanting to continue to have activity and heal slowly, or kind of just shut it down, get fully healed, and then get in shape. Because if you continue to go real hard, your recovery is going to be slow.
“Do you want to heal fast? Or do you want it to continue to go slow and not allow you to be who you want to be? So, when you see him in a boot, he’s made a decision that, ‘Look, let me just let this heal.’”
The sight of Williams in a boot nearly five months after the initial injury has been worrying to some who have seen him in recent days in Lexington, his father acknowledged. But Williams Sr. said there has been no “rebreak” of the foot and made clear that Williams has not had to undergo any additional procedures since the initial surgery in January.
Williams’ father also didn’t explicitly rule him out from taking part in UK’s practices later this summer, though he stressed that the focus now is getting him fully healed, even if that means eight weeks of watching from the sidelines. He said his son continues to have regular scans on his foot, with doctors and team personnel monitoring his recovery progress.
“Look, we know the summer is important, in terms of jelling and everything,” Williams Sr. said. “But the people that are playing, they don’t have injuries. So they’re not recovering. And his continued recovery is what we’re focused on.”
He said that’s been hard for Williams, who had emerged as a starter for Pope’s team just before the injury occurred, to accept over the past few months.
“When it comes to injury, you got to protect them from themselves,” he said. “Because they think they’re invincible. They think that things are just going to heal, and things are going to be OK. Well, yeah, that’s true. If you do certain things. … You just have to take the time.”
Sitting out now, Williams’ father explained, would put him in a better spot to go through the team’s full preseason practice session in the fall. He did not express any doubt regarding Williams’ availability for the start of Kentucky’s season in November.
Williams Sr. also said wearing the protective boot takes even more pressure off of his son’s healing foot. “If you want to take it to the extreme, you get on the scooter,” he said.
Williams, who spent his freshman year at Tulane and will be a junior next season, is expected to be a key player on Pope’s third Kentucky team, potentially a starter for a squad that is ranked No. 17 nationally on the preseason lists from ESPN and CBS Sports.
He shot 41.2% from 3-point range as a freshman and 35.9% as a sophomore. The addition of several players this offseason who appear to be fits for Pope’s offense — a list that includes guards Zoom Diallo and Alex Wilkins, as well as forward Milan Momcilovic — is expected to open up the floor even more for Williams, who came to UK with NBA draft upside and is also viewed as a potentially elite defender at the SEC level.
Sitting out now, his father says, will put him in the best position to achieve his team and individual goals by the time the 2026-27 season rolls around.
“Everything is fine,” he said. “This is June. It’s June. … Jones fractures take three to four months of nothing. And he’s had four months of trying to do something. And so the progress is slow. That’s all it is.”
