Although Kyrie Irving might not be back for the start of the NBA playoffs, there’s reason to be optimistic about the Boston Celtics point guard’s long-term status.
Irving underwent a minimally invasive procedure to remove a tension wire from his left knee back on March 24. The wire was placed in Irving’s knee after he fractured his kneecap in the 2015 NBA Finals, and its removal should alleviate the discomfort he had been feeling this season.
Don’t believe us? Just listen to the experts.
“That’s a very good sign that that’s what the surgery was about,” Dr. Chris Chihlas, an orthopedic specialist with Southcoast Health, recently told NBC Sports Boston’s A. Sherrod Blakely. “If it was just irritation to his patella tendon and he was having patella tendinitis, not kneecap trouble, then taking the wire out should completely fix that.”
In other words, Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge wasn’t trying to pull a fast one recently when he said Irving’s knee issue shouldn’t pose a long-term problem. It’ll hurt the Celtics if Irving isn’t back in time for the first round of the playoffs — the organization announced on March 24 that he was expected to resume basketball activities in three to six weeks — but the 26-year-old figures to be a franchise cornerstone for the foresseable future. The C’s are better off taking care of things now in order to avoid potential complications down the road.
“So, when the kneecap breaks, think if you split a piece of wood and it splits in two pieces and you wrap a rope around it to keep the two pieces together,” Dr. Chihlas told Blakely, shedding more light on Irving’s recent procedure. “So that wrap around… it just squeezes the fracture together like a lasso.
“The wire is put in there to be just for a temporary period of time to hold the pieces together while the body heals the fracture,” he added. “So the body kind of glues them back together, like any fracture heals together. Then the wires are extra; you don’t need it anymore.”
The Celtics have had some bad luck this season in terms of injuries, starting with Gordon Hayward’s gruesome leg injury on opening night. But this medical breakdown seemingly is good news for Boston, which hopes to make a deep playoff run with or without its best player.
