Coming into this season, the big man on the Denver Nuggets roster everyone was talking about was Jusuf Nurkic, the 7-foot-tall Bosnian center who made waves across the NBA with his brash, unforgiving play as a rookie.

Two months into the season, though, Nurkic has become an afterthought, overshadowed by Nikola Jokic and Joffrey Lauvergne, as he hasn’t made an appearance on the NBA stage for eight months.

Nurkic tore his patellar tendon late last season and has been rehabbing from surgery ever since; the Nuggets haven’t exactly been forthright about a possible return date, either.

But today, Chris Dempsey of the Denver Post is reporting that Nurkic has finally been cleared to return to full-contact practice, one of the final major hurdles he needed to overcome before returning to the floor. Unfortunately, at this time of year, NBA teams don’t exactly have much time for full practices, which means that Nurkic’s return could still be a ways away.

“He hasn’t done anything,” head coach Michael Malone said. “So we’ll probably limit him to 15 (minutes) of practice, then maybe half an hour, then maybe 45 minutes, then an hour. Once he can get through a full practice, then he’ll be ready to play. Whether that’s two weeks, three weeks, who knows? Obviously keep our fingers crossed that the sooner the better. But until that happens, we’ve got guys in Kenneth (Faried) and Joffrey (Lauvergne) and Darrell Arthurs and Nikola (Jokic) who are playing at a high level right now. So, we’ll continue to hold it down until he is back.”

Still, this is the best news the Nuggets have received regarding Nurkic in nearly a calendar year, and it means that he will, indeed, be making his return to the lineup sooner than later.

The question, though, will be how he fits back into Malone’s rotation? Again, Jokic and Lauvergne have more than proven themselves over the last 25 games. Will Malone drop one of them out of the rotation in order to get Nurkic starter’s minutes? Will Nurkic start? Could the Nuggets play ultra-large, with two centers in the game at once? Or has Nurkic’s injury cost him an opportunity at the Nuggets’ center of the future?

It’s an extremely interesting situation, but having too many good big men is a pretty good problem to have.