From what little I know about tendonitis recovery (I have it in my ankle), it's a push/pull process of working it out to strengthen it and then resting it. Once it's inflammed, however, rest is one of the few options.
Well. . .tendonitis implies soft tissue. A tendon is soft tissue. If you were to take a normal plain x-ray, tendons would not appear, why? because it's a soft tissue, just like ligaments, muscle, fat, etc. The fact that post work out Greg is experiencing swelling is not necessarily an ominous sign, in fact it's not that surprising. For acute bouts of tendonitis/bursitis/other inflammatory insult, swelling is a natural reaction. The fact that your issues with tendonitis (if in fact you do have problems with tendonitis versus some other form of chronic pain such as osteoarthritis) does not involve swelling, does not make necessarily mean that all issues with tendonitis should be swelling free. I for one am not too concerned regarding Greg's rehab. I've certainly had my share of jumper's knee, except not with basketball but marathon training. I certainly had my share of swollen knees after a run as well. Sometimes you can only progress as fast as your body will let you, and in greg's case it's telling him that he still has a ways to go. Lucky for us Joel seems to be progressing much quicker.
No, PER is a measure of a player's offensive efficiency. "Player Efficiency Rating". It said that Wesley had, compared to average NBA starters, below-average efficiency in his offensive game. It wants me to believe that Batum last year was MORE EFFICIENT than any year of Prince's career, and due in part to Batum's relative high 3pt%, low turnover and usage rates and high ORtg, I could see that being the case (I don't have Prince's stats off the top of my head, but he's never been known as an offensive juggernaut).
Which is hilarious when you look at Wesley's %'s last year and now seeing him do more things in a different offense. It means Batum's a more efficient jump shooter that's set up to get wide open looks vs Prince creating his own shot. Batum's ast'd on close 90% of his shots while Prince is below 60%. If they were asked to change roles whose PER stays the same/goes up and whose goes down? You can call him a more efficient player if you'd like, but what does that really mean when you consider they play two different types of games with one being capable of doing more than the other guy? Besides, too many times I see people use PER as a measuring stick of who's better between two players(Love vs Aldridge).
MIXUM, It seems this forum comes short of fulfilling your craving of drama, hyperbole and negative speculation. Here are some links I believe will help your quest: http://www.sirius.com/howard100 http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/
I'm saying that it is more than just minor tendonitis. Players can play through 'normal' tendonitis. The "itis" part is the first clue for inflammation. Oh, and thank you Dr. Google for responding to a point that I never made. Pathetic!
Playing with tendonitis is commonplace. Playing with tendonitis so severe that you accumulate enough fluid and blood to swell your knee is quite another. Sounds like he has so real issues right now, and the only real cure is rest. I hope they shut him down and have him stick to riding a bike for a while.
I think the point here is that this isn't the difference between "major" or "minor" or "normal" tendonitis (I'm not sure what you mean by this), it's that this is a normal process of tendonitis. Either way, Greg's healing as fast as his body will allow, which isn't as slow as everyone is making out to be. (How long did it take Blake Griffin to get back last year? Marcus Camby earlier in his career?) Sometimes it's a matter of tweaking the workout, wearing a strap, more ibuprofen and ice, or sometimes it's a matter of getting enough rest. Greg's surrounded by the best advisers money can buy, I think the speculation regarding his rehab is pretty silly, especially coming from opinion columnists that have absolutely no expertise in sports medicine or rehab medicine.
Yet here we both are speculating about his rehab. Anyhow, tendonitis isn't really a "process", as in it starts really bad and then goes away after time. At least, that's been my experience with it. I just don't see how "tendonitis" is going to reportedly keep the guy out until at least December, unless something is continually causing the tendon or tendons to swell. Then again, I can only go by my personal experience. Either way, I can't see this news in any sort of positive light for the present, and for the future of his knees.
At this point I'm not sure I'm speculating, all I've said is: things seem to going just fine and he's surrounded by the best. At any rate, my point was more directed at the media types who have been speculating without actually talking with someone who knows what they're talking about. How hard is it to speak with an expert on the subject? Also, to get back to the discussion of tendonitis. Tendonitis at its bare bones is simply inflammation of a tendon. The process is the inciting cause of the inflammation, usually over-use injury. For those that have trained for a triathalon or marathon after being out of shape, developing tendonitis is pretty commonplace. Oden's been out of activity for quite awhile and now trying to get back into NBA shape. Even doing all the right things, over-use injuries can occur. If I were to speculate on why he might not be ready to play until December, it's as much the conditioning as it is the tendonitis. You can't really get in shape when your knee is hurting. I had jumper's knee that wouldn't kick in until mile 4 or 5. In my case, I didn't need rest so much as I needed a knee strap and took more diligently take ibuprofen and ice my knee after runs. And I was getting fairly significant swelling during this time. I was able to train through it with some minor tweaks to my workout regimen. It's seems that's what Oden is trying to do, from what I can gather from beat reporters. One point on the knee that I do wonder about is the different techniques they've used to reduce the swelling. Almost certainly ibuprofen/ice/rest and maybe even cortisone shots have been used. I find it interesting that I haven't seen a knee strap in recent videos and pics of training camp. For whatever reason (and I can tell you we have no idea why), these things work for jumper's knee as well as other ailments such as IT syndrome, patellar tendonitis, pes anceritis, and runner's knee, etc. Whether he actually has "jumper's knee" or some form of tendonitis of the knee that more than likely involves several of the ailments listed, regardless I'd think he'd benefit from at least trying a strap. More than likely he has I'm sure, just thought it was kind of weird to not see him wearing one in what little I've seen of him. One other thought I've had on his rehab is wondering what alternative modalities he's tried. I work in the medical field, and I've worked with sports med docs that have used something called shock wave therapy (on NBA players in fact) for these kinds of over use injury problems. It's kind of a controversial technique for joint pain and inflammation in general, but has been successful with knees. Different docs in different areas of the country have different methods, but I know of at least one NBA player that swears by it. In SLC, getting this kind of treatment is readily available, for someone in a different part of the country, I'm not sure if this is used much. In the particular case I was privy to, the doc had to call around to all the cities on that particular road trip to make sure this kind of therapy was available, and in at least several cities this wasn't. I realize that I am now speculating on what kinds of therapy they have tried for Greg, but I find this stuff fascinating. Sports medicine is fun because not all therapies used have a lot of evidence to back up their use.
Or third best player WHEN PLAYING. I'm assuming that obviously Oden and Roy are 1/2 when playing and the OP is making a case for Matthews being #3 above LMA. But you could make the case with the time Oden has missed that Oden is only one of the top two players when healthy.
I hope so, but I'm skeptical. The rest of your posts are spot on, however. In my non-medically trained, sitting on a chair, staring at a computer screen, no-where near the Blazers practice facility opinion, of course.
You say you can't understand why he doesn't use a knee strap. You say experimental techniques like shock wave therapy aren't available in many cities. You say you don't know what his therapy has been because your only source is reporters...And you say you're sure Oden has the best doctors. Well, maybe he has the best in this smaller city, or maybe he doesn't. Because of the secrecy, we don't know the therapy or the doctors. One doctor was named, and I sure hope there are more than one. This is why in this board, I called for more openness from the team about what his therapy is. Everyone responding disagreed and wanted to trust the team after these years of failure.
I didn't see that. I might be a geek at this, but whenever I hear about a star athlete undergoing an orthopedic surgery, I look for Dr. James Andrews' name somewhere in the article, and wonder about it if I don't. I mean, if I'm an owner paying millions to an athlete, and can have a doctor with that kind of track record operate on him and direct his rehab, why wouldn't I fork over whatever price he wants? Maybe the Blazers have a Dr. Andrews-level doc on the staff. Maybe they don't. But I agree that saying "trust us, he'll be fine" doesn't help with what the team's bottom line is: putting high-paying butts into high-priced seats.
