jnrjr79 wrote:I'd be with you here if it were as simple as "he's been out 2.5 years as a result of a single injury," but I think some of the issue here is there seems to have been a ton of diagnostic confusion about what was actually wrong and then sort of just going in and cleaning up what they could find without really knowing if the conditions being treated were the actual cause of his pain. Supposedly this last surgery was done as a result of finally figuring out what was wrong and doing the procedure that is appropriate in response to it. If true, you can kind of throw the first 1.5 years and procedures out the window, because they don't appear to have actually been treatments for the injury he suffered.
Your description of this would imply that they just screwed around for a year and a half doing the wrong thing, and if they had this done right away he'd probably already be back.
No one has had a cartilage transplant and come back and played in the NBA. Lonzo will be the first if he has a successful recovery. It's a more experimental procedure used as a last ditch effort when everything fails, not a standard treatment that we just screwed up and should have done earlier.
Interestingly, it looks like the Bulls can waive/stretch Lonzo and then subsequently still get medical retirement, as long as they apply for the medical retirement during the original term of the contract.
Yeah, what I meant is if they don't get medical retirement, waiving and stretching him this year is 3 years instead of 5 years. If they did it last year, he'd have been on the books for the next 5 though not sure if they need to do the full amount of years now that I type it out or if they just have the option to go up to 5 as a max.