With all due respect to Tyrann Mathieu, I always thought that Honey Badger was a more appropriate nickname for Avery Bradley. He's a relentless defender that has a nose for the ball and his scrape and claw until he gets it, but with the news today that he's "months ahead of schedule," maybe we should start calling him Wolverine. Not wolverine the animal, Wolverine from the X-Men with the inhuman healing power.

Avery Bradley getting some shots up at practice today...he's looking pretty good, ahead of schedule hopefully. twitter.com/MollyAMcGrath/…

— Molly McGrath (@MollyAMcGrath) October 3, 2012

This image will perk you up: Avery Bradley on the court getting up quite a few shots before practice twitter.com/celtics/status…

— Boston Celtics (@celtics) October 3, 2012

The word out of Istanbul is that Avery put up some shots today. This is a big step. At Media Day, he said that his doctors put him on a January return timetable, but that he was months ahead of schedule after getting both shoulders repaired. Even if it's only a month and not months, we could see #0 as early as December and maybe in November. He also mentioned that he hadn't picked up a basketball all summer because he was worried that he might shoot it. It's good to see that he's at least allowed to scratch that itch now with a month to go before the season starts.

I hate seeing sad Avery Bradley and I can't wait until he's back on the court. His return can not be overstated. His suffocating D is one thing, but there's also the emotional lift he'll bring back to Boston as soon as he hits the floor. Teammates root for Avery and by the end of the season, it was clear that Rondo loved playing with him. The Celtics open the season at Miami, but don't see them again until January 27th in the Garden. Hopefully by then, Avery will be fully recovered with several games under his belt. He'll be back to his old self locking down the perimeter and doing this:

D-Wade gets sent back by Bradley! (via NBA)

Watching that clip again, you can see that even in April, he was struggling with shoulder pain. It just shows how much guts AB had to literally shoulder the pain for two months just to help his team.