In what ended up being the most gruesome knee injury this side of Shaun Livingston, Baron Davis will miss 12 full months after tearing three tendons in his right knee.
An MRI on Monday revealed that New York Knicks point guard Baron Davis has suffered a partial tear of the patella tendon in his right knee and complete tears of the right anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments, according to the team.
Davis is expected to undergo surgery later this week. Recovery time is approximately 12 months.
The video of the injury made me squeamish. The photos of the injury were downright gross. And the extent of the injury is mind blowing. A 12 months recovery and rehab time? Wow.
In basketball years, Baron Davis is getting to, you know, “that” time. He’s been in the league 13 years, which is right when you start checking the expiration date on the carton and smelling the milk before you pour it.
He has made a couple of All Star games, gotten a couple of MVP votes, and made about $130 million bucks. A nice career, I’d say.
Davis was once a fun player who really seemed to enjoy running and gunning. But in recent years, anyone with eyes and the desire to use them to watch a game in which a Baron Davis team participated would tell you that he was just about done. His back was slowly choking the life out of his game.
Now … this.
In real life years, Baron is only 33 years old. He’s young, rich, and he’s got a bunch of things he wants to do that don’t involve basketball. He may or may not have dreams of being a lumberjack. Who knows, really?
What we do know is that this is a horrible, horrible knee injury. It’s going to take a lot to come back from this. He’s going to have put forth that rehab effort no matter what. But then after that, will he want to get into basketball shape? And will any team, 12 months from now, be willing to add Davis to its roster before all that rehab is done in the hopes he might be ready for a second round bench role?
The real answer is “maybe” because you don’t know what anyone is thinking or how desperate some team might be at that time. The realistic answer is “no,” which means Davis will miss a full season and then try to hook on with a team for the 2013-14 season.
At almost 35 years old. Coming off tearing half his tendons in his right knee.
This is probably it for Baron Davis. And while there’s nothing wrong with being a super-rich guy in his early 30’s, I still feel bad about it ending this way for him. In the Hollywood Baron loves, the script would have a different ending. In the real life drama that is professional sports, you rarely get to write your own ending.
