Toronto Raptors: 4 Things the Durant Injury Revealed About All of Us
By Go Paolo
Team Staff: A Party to Durant’s Fall?
Let’s get one thing straight: even if Durant was pressured to play, it was still his choice as a grown adult. Nobody put a gun to his head. He went out there on his own free will.
However, rumblings are starting that the Warriors’ staff may have misdiagnosed the severity of his injury. At least, according to ESPN’s Rachel Nichols:
So according to @Rachel__Nichols, the Warriors felt KD couldn't have hurt the injury worse by playing. If that is correct the way I just heard on ESPN then the doctors truly failed him. Malpractice
— Clarence Hill Jr (@clarencehilljr) June 11, 2019
If the reports are accurate, then the Warriors organization failed Durant. Situations like this vindicate Leonard in his decision to abstain from last season after failing to see eye-to-eye with the Spurs’ medical staff.
And this also further validates why players are a league on their own. If they can’t trust their own staff to keep them safe, who will?
Although we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, other physicians have already diagnosed Durant’s injury differently from what the Warriors were leading on.
According to Dr. David Chao, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist, Durant’s injury was an Achilles injury all along:
Pay attention to how #KevinDurant right calf contracts violently. Beleive it or not, the strength of the gasteocnemius muscle contracting so quickly/forcefully is what tears the Achilles tendon. pic.twitter.com/odCSgdNiGF
— David J. Chao - ProFootballDoc (@ProFootballDoc) June 11, 2019
At the press conference, Warriors exec Bob Myers was inconsolable. Here was a man who reacted as he had just seen a family relative get hurt. The tears came out of sympathy and out of guilt, although he wasn’t to blame for Durant’s injury.
Warriors coach Steve Kerr called Game 5’s victory an “incredible victory and a horrible loss”. Like Myers, Kerr was devastated with Durant’s injury. Just a few days ago, he said he “wouldn’t have forgiven himself” if he had played Klay Thompson, who was also injured, played in Game 3 and reinjured himself.
That same nightmare scenario played out with Durant.
But both Myers and Kerr can’t be too hard on themselves. They can only do so much. As the cliche goes, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
With the benefit of the doubt, Myers and Kerr most likely erred on the side of caution. They wouldn’t have supported Durant playing if they knew without a shadow of a doubt it would lead to tragedy.
Next. Raptors are on the brink of an NBA title. dark
Playing was entirely Durant’s choice to do so. He knew the risks. It’s a sad conclusion, but the only one that matters for now.