ChettheJet wrote:I amazed that so many orthopedic surgeons post here even you seem incompetent to make diagnoses having never seen a patient. Hilarious that people so uninformed know so much about the Ball family.
I think it's silly to just say it's the Ball family, like having their DNA is the problem. That said, lots of information that doesn't require you being an orthopedic doctor examining his knee to draw some conclusions.
If you want to take the negative side:
1: No player has ever missed as much time as he will miss and come back to be the same quality player.
2: Only one player has ever missed as much (or more) time as he will miss and come back to be a relevant player (Grant Hill)
3: No player has had this procedure and been a meaningful player in the NBA again (only a couple guys I know of have had it, both were fringe guys, so I don't think this proves the procedure is bad, but there is no evidence it is good either)
4: No player that I'm aware of (though can't conclusively prove because I can't find the data) has had three procedures on their knee and successfully come back after the first two didn't yield a come back.
If you want to look at the positive side:
1: The sample size of all of these things is small, and while it's negative, it isn't large enough to draw conclusions on
2: Medicine is probably an order of magnitude better today than it was 20 years ago and still significantly better than 10 years ago. The procedure he's getting is new, and with our advances, we should be more optimistic about new procedures even without tons of backing evidence
3: The procedure does have some backing evidence at lower levels. The margins are a ton bigger there, so not fully relevant, but not fully irrelevant either
I think the negative side of this is more compelling than the positive side, especially given that he is not 100% today still after 1 year from the most recent procedure. That said, fingers crossed for Lonzo, it does seem at the very least he's gotten some relief and is in a better spot than he was.