Inside Johnny Furphy's roller coaster road to recovery

• ‍Cool name, terrible Johnny Furphy hot take‍
• Johnny Furphy delivers first NBA double-double‍
• Johnny Furphy's 'Training Day' with Pascal Siakam

Sidelined Aussie talent Johnny Furphy has taken fans inside the "roller coaster" of NBA life as he battles through a serious knee injury which could keep him out of action for most of next season.

Furphy, a Melbourne and Basketball Australia Centre of Excellence product, suffered a torn ACL after completing one of his trademark high-flying dunks for the Indiana Pacers against the Toronto Raptors on February 8 - the latest hurdle in an injury-plagued season for the second-year wing from the University of Kansas.

The 21-year-old was expected to play a significant role with the Pacers this season after the franchise's chances of going back to the NBA Finals, where they lost in seven games to Oklahoma City Thunder in 2025, was dealt a major blow following an achilles injury to star point guard Tyrese Haliburton.

But foot, ankle and knee injuries kept Furphy to just 35 games for the 2025-26 season.

In a VLOG called 'Part of the Journey: Johnny Furphy', the former All-Big 12 Freshman Team member documented the first stages of his recovery from the injury and first spoke on how he's dealt with the ups and downs of his professional basketball career so far.

"Honestly, I feel like I don't try and kind of get sucked into the emotion, I just really kind of like task orientated and then it's easier to kind of look back on (my career so far) and see how it all happened," Furphy said.

"But in the moment I'd say I tend to be pretty focused on like what I got to do but yeah, as you said it's been it's been pretty crazy and now I kind of have more time to reflect."

As to where his focus is now in the initial stages of his recovery, Furphy said he anticipated challenges along the way but those battles were made easier with the presence of his mum and friend, Hudson, who's in the video.

"Just getting out of the crutches because that just opens up a world of more more exercises I can do," he said on the VLOG.

"I am definitely anticipating like ups and downs of motivation, which I think it's good to expect because it's going to be a part of it, but yeah I mean that's kind of kind of where my head's at.

"I honestly didn't really have any expectations, I knew it was going to be a grind to get through that first stage, which it was but thankfully mum and Hudson were here at the time, I don't know what I would have done without them.

"But the pain wasn't crazy, it was more just sleeping, struggling to sleep. That was definitely the biggest thing that has kind of still been occurring, I didn't really want to set any expectations because otherwise I didn't want to get disappointed with anything but yeah, that that was pretty much it."

As part of the episode, Furphy is seen trying some new hobbies - from golf simulators to collecting basketball cards, including his own and a rare Victor Wembanyama card - and said he planned to use his lengthy recovery time as an opportunity.

"That's been the biggest thing for me, just figuring out what to do with myself," he said.

"I want to look back on this and know that I kind of took advantage of this opportunity.

"So at the moment, I'm looking at finding new hobbies and I'm just at the beginning of that and so, I think next time we chat, I'll have a lot more to report on."

Stay tuned for episode two, which we will show here on basketball.com.au.