I don’t know if you would call the Portland Trailblazers snake-bitten when it comes to the injury bug, but upon finding out that 3 time All Star Brandon Roy will be out of action indefinitely, on top of news that former #1 overall pick Greg Oden will once again miss another season, many fans may surely feel that way.
After missing several recent games over the past 2 weeks to supposedly “rest” his sore knees, Roy and team officials have agreed to shut down Portland’s franchise player for a lengthy period of time since there has been no improvement in his condition.
Roy’s knees have bothered him for most of the season even though coach Nate McMillan has tried to limit his minutes in an attempt to alleviate the pain. The problem as described by Roy is that he has a lack of cartilage in both knees. He has averaged 16.6 ppg this season, far lower than his career average of 19.9 ppg.
In a statement made prior to the Blazers game Thursday night Roy said:
“Right now there’s no timetable. It’s just until we can find a solution for this problem.”
“(Sitting out the season is) a possibility. That is a possibility. But don’t even want to go that far to say that.”
“After sitting out these last two weeks, the knee hasn’t really improved to where I think I can go out there and be much better than I was that last game. That led to this decision.”
“Yes, (surgery is) a possibility.”
“Right now, I don’t know (about what option for treatment may be chosen). We’ve explored a number of them. We’ll continue to look for them. We’ll just look for everything. It may be something that comes up we haven’t heard of, surgery, those are all things we’ll be looking for.”
By Brandon’s own words, playing this season doesn’t look too promising. Add in the whole Greg Oden, Jeff Pendergraph, and Joel Pryzbilla injuries and it appears that Portland will once again be playing with a make-shift line-up the rest of the season. To their credit, the Blazers continue to stay entrenched in the Western Conference Playoff picture, currently clinging to the 8th spot with a 18-16 record. Their future now relies on talented youngsters LaMarcus Aldridge, Wes Mathews, Nicolas Batum, and 2nd year guard Patty Mills hands if they still have hopes of making the post-season.
Unfortunately Blazers fans may have to face the fact that Brandon Roy will probably never again play at an All Star level. He will surely continually need periods of rest even when he does finally return. Having a bone-on-bone condition in both knees isn’t conducive to having a very long NBA career either. I feel for everyone in the Portland area, which is a great basketball town that supports their squad in either good or bad times and especially Roy, who has been one of the league’s more underrated superstars. Let’s try and remember some of Brandon’s best plays over his career to this point.
Check out Brandon Roy’s Ultimate Career Mix:
Allen Moll has been a lifelong NBA and NCAA College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously, and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen also provides content to Bleacherreport.com, Upperdeckblog.com, in addition to being a tenured NBA and NCAA columnist for TheHoopDoctors.com.
