New Orleans Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday will return to the court within the next week, a league source confirmed to ESPN.
Holiday has missed the first nine games, in which the Pelicans have compiled a 1-8 record, in order to tend to his wife, Lauren, as she recovers from the birth of their child and surgery to remove a benign tumor from the right side of her brain.
There still is no set date scheduled for Holiday's return, the source said.
The Holidays have spent the opening of the season in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Lauren, a two-time gold medalist and 2015 World Cup winner with the U.S. women's national team soccer team, has received medical care. Jrue in recent days has been photographed working out on the campus of the University of North Carolina.
The Pelicans recently sent assistant coach Jamelle McMillan to work with Holiday while the team was away on a three-game road trip.
The Vertical first reported Holiday's imminent return Friday.
The Pelicans have reiterated throughout Holiday's absence that there has been no pressure put on him to rush back.
"It's a tough situation," Anthony Davis said last week. "We respect his decision and whatever it is that he's doing. We know that he wants to be here, but of course his family is first. He has a wife and a family -- and now a daughter -- to take care of. We respect his time. He'll come back when he knows the time is right."
Holiday, 26, was limited to a combined 74 games in his first two seasons in New Orleans because of right leg injuries, but he broke through in 2015-16, averaging 16.8 points and six assists and a career-high 19.7 player efficiency rating in 65 games. His season was cut short after he fractured an orbital wall of his right eye during a game, but did he not miss a game because of his right leg outside of planned absences in the first half of the season.
"My family comes before basketball," Holiday told the Times-Picayune in early September. "I'm obviously blessed to play this game and be in the position I am in, but my wife is the most important thing in the world to me. She comes before anything else."
The Pelicans, who defeated the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday for their first win of the season, currently rank 26th in the NBA in offensive efficiency and tied for 13th in defensive efficiency.