At long last, some good news for the New Orleans Pelicans: Anthony Davis won’t have any medical restrictions to begin the 2016-17 season.
From the Times-Picayune‘s John Reid:
Anthony Davis is expected to be medically cleared to start the season with no restrictions, New Orleans Pelicans general manager Dell Demps said at a season-ticket event for fans at the team’s practice facility on Wednesday night.
Davis underwent a surgical procedure in March to fix a tendinopathy and a stress reaction problem in his left knee cap. Davis also suffered a torn labrum last season, but he did not require surgery on his left shoulder.
Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry said on the Pelicans’ in-house podcast show last week that Davis is still a little banged up but he’ll be able to play pickup games and do everything in training camp and then will be ready at 100 percent when the Pelicans open the regular season on Oct. 26 against the Denver Nuggets at the Smoothie King Center.
This is huge for the Pelicans—bigger than it probably should be.
Tyreke Evans already won’t be healthy enough to start the season, and Jrue Holiday will be out indefinitely as he tends to his wife, who is pregnant and will undergo treatment for a brain tumor after labor is induced.
That makes Davis one of the only non-question marks in the rotation right now. The Pelicans cannot count on Omer Asik for anything anymore, Quincy Pondexter is an injury risk and additions like Langston Galloway, E’Twaun Moore, Solomon Hill and Buddy Hield are all projects on some level. New Orleans will look a lot better if Hill and Moore live up to their new contracts, but that’s not a guarantee.
Davis is the Pelicans’ one guarantee. You know what you’re getting from him—superstar production in almost every area of the game. To have that restricted in any way to start the regular season would have likely torpedoed New Orleans’ already-fading playoff hopes.
