How Casey Prather overcame two lost seasons to shine again

Casey Prather was riding high. A league MVP and First Team All-Star in Israel, he was at the peak of his career. Then a serious knee injury in the dying seconds of an elimination game changed everything.

The setback was devastating, but the challenges did not end there. Prather attempted multiple comebacks, only to miss two full seasons due to a patella injury and fractured kneecap.

“Every day I had to convince myself to start all over again. I remember times when I could not really walk and I had to wake up the next day and learn how to lift my leg up, learn how to step,” Prather told the Gold Coast Bulletin.

“That was the same year that I won MVP in Israel and when you go from such a high like winning an MVP to such a low like a career-ending injury it takes you through a lot.

“It was probably one of the more difficult things I had to experience in my life, I have had family passing away and that was obviously hard and this right here, I felt similar in that space of losing something I cherished so much about for so long.”

Moving into his 30's, the clock was ticking on Prather's professional career. It would be two and a half years from that first injury in Israel to his return with the Brisbane Bullets.

His early games were understandably quiet, and doubts began to creep in. Could he still play with the same speed, power and athleticism that made him a dominant force before injury?

But Prather's resilience was unshakable. He had endured too much and worked too hard to walk away.

“I obviously came through a pretty tough time with injuries and things like that so just being able to bounce back and persevere through that and see the rewards of putting in all that hard work was just an amazing feeling.”

From there, his form exploded. After failing to score more than 17 points in his first seven games of NBL25, he went on a run of 27 or more in seven of the next eight matches.

By season’s end, he was named to the All-NBL Second Team and crowned Brisbane Bullets MVP, with averages of 21.3 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.1 steals a game.

At 33, his numbers were comparable to those of his Championship years in Perth.

As far as comeback stories go, this one is hard to beat.

Read the full story here >> Brisbane Bullets star Casey Prather throws support behind Gold Coast’s NBL dream