Mark Williams doesn’t appear to be returning to the Hornets anytime soon.

Charlotte Hornets center Mark Williams, who missed most of the 2023-24 season with a back injury, was expected to play a major role in turning things around in his first year under new manager Charles Lee. While that could still happen, it doesn’t look like the third-year player will be returning to form anytime soon.

Williams suffered a foot injury the day before training camp and has yet to make his season debut. At the time of the injury, Williams, head coach Charles Lee and Hornets vice president of basketball operations Jeff Peterson said it was not anything serious and that it was not expected to be a long-term injury.

It’s been more than a month since the injury, and Charles Lee didn’t offer the most promising information in his pregame press conference Friday night.

“I think he has done a lot of individual work now and is taking it step by step. He practices and supervises all practical training and filming. Even today at shootarounds, he stands next to me and tries to talk about the game plan and everything. He does his best to absorb all the information, understand the terminology, and when he returns, he will be ready to get to work right away.

“But for now he’s just doing individual work and in the next phase of his return to the game plan he’ll be doing some group work and once we get into training and things like that we’ll keep people updated.”

Based on what Lee said, it appears Williams is more than a few days away from returning. In fact, it looks more like he could miss the next few games, if not more, before returning to the court.

What’s worse is that his starting replacement, Nick Richards, left last night’s game against Boston with a shoulder injury and did not play in the second half. If Richards is unable to play, Charlotte will be left with Moussa Diabate as the team’s lone center. Taj Gibson can move into the five if needed, as can Grant Williams in a small lineup. This is certainly not an ideal situation for the Hornets.

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