Spurs Notebook: Elson Progress

[MannyIsGod]

Spurs notebook: Elson shows progress with shooting work

Web Posted: 01/10/2007 12:07 AM CST

Johnny Ludden
Express-News Francisco Elson did some light shooting Tuesday for the first time since injuring his right shoulder. Team officials said he is progressing well, but don't expect him to play for at least another week. Elson has missed the past seven games since suffering a slight tear to his rotator cuff in the Dec. 26 loss to Milwaukee. He didn't accompany the team on its trip to Denver after Tuesday's game and also won't travel to Chicago this weekend.

Elson will visit the doctor again Monday to see if he can be cleared for more strenuous basketball-related activities.

Bonner proud for Gators: At least one Spurs player was thrilled with the outcome of Monday's NCAA football championship.

Matt Bonner attended the University of Florida from 1999-2003. Since he couldn't attend the game in person, he watched from his couch while friends e-mailed him pictures of the field.

Florida beat Ohio State 41-14.

"That's crazy since considering how big of underdogs (the Gators) were," Bonner said. "Everybody was writing them off.

"When (Ohio State) ran that first kickoff back for a touchdown, I thought, it's going to be a long game."

Bonner said he's reminded a few of his teammates that Florida is now the only school to ever hold football and men's basketball national titles at the same time.

Of course, with the Spurs' roster filled with so many foreign-born players, there were also a few of Bonner's teammates who didn't care.

"I asked Manu (Ginobili), 'Hey, did you watch the game last night?' Bonner said. "He was like, 'What game?' He was dead serious. He had no clue.

"I was like, 'Oh, just forget it.'"

Finley returning to form: Robert Horry isn't the only Spur glad the NBA switched back to the leather ball.

Michael Finley has looked noticeably more confident since the league made the change. More importantly, he's also making more shots.

Finley has gone 14 of 29 in the five games since the league dumped its microfiber ball.

"I don't know if it's mental or what," Finley said. "Every shot I took with the (synthetic) ball, even though some of them went in, it didn't feel good.

"With this ball every shot feels good. It's what I'm used to."

Aldridge shows promise: Portland rookie forward LaMarcus Aldridge delivered an inspiring performance in his first game in the state since leaving the University of Texas.

Aldridge had 17 points and six rebounds in 24 minutes. He made six of his eight shots.

Aldridge's minutes had been limited recently while Portland presumably tries to showcase center Jamal Magloire before the trading deadline.

"I really like the fact that he was active tonight and competed against Tim Duncan," Portland coach Nate McMillan said of Aldridge. "I thought about our game tonight and realized this is a glimpse into the future of this team. LaMarcus is a huge key in the future of the Blazers."

Briefly: Brent Barry went down hard under the Spurs' basket in the fourth quarter after Zach Randolph caught him in the nose with an elbow. He stayed in the game and promptly hit a 3-pointer. ... Horry was announced as the starting center during introductions, which created a moment of confusion. Fabricio Oberto got the start for the second consecutive game.

[T Park]

"I asked Manu (Ginobili), 'Hey, did you watch the game last night?' Bonner said. "He was like, 'What game?' He was dead serious. He had no clue.

"I was like, 'Oh, just forget it.'"

:lol

Poor RR.


Finley has gone 14 of 29 in the five games since the league dumped its microfiber ball

Steve Smith indeed :lol

[MannyIsGod]

Steve Smith led the league in 3pt % as a Spur. The comparison holds true because Finley doesn't do shit but shoot and he hasn't done that all that great all year.

Here's the thing though, all he was brought here to do was shoot and score off the bench. But because Pop uses him as a 4 when they run small ball, we need him to do more which is something he's never had to do before.

Finley will be fine if we count on him for scoring off the bench, but if we need him to do more then we might as well expect Beno to start dunking over people.

[Trainwreck2100]

Does Elson plan on taking acting classes

[T Park]

Steve Smith led the league in 3pt % as a Spur. The comparison holds true because Finley doesn't do shit but shoot and he hasn't done that all that great all year.

Here's the thing though, all he was brought here to do was shoot and score off the bench. But because Pop uses him as a 4 when they run small ball, we need him to do more which is something he's never had to do before.

Finley will be fine if we count on him for scoring off the bench, but if we need him to do more then we might as well expect Beno to start dunking over people.


Steve Smith was never as athletic, nor as good a defender.

Steve Smith also didn't really shoot as well as Finley is. Finley takes more shots than Smith did too.

So the comparison IMO is off base.

Does Elson plan on taking acting classes




How about we just hope no one else hires him for that, and he focuses on defense and spurs ball.

[MannyIsGod]

No one ever said they were clones dude. Its about ineffectiveness.

[timvp]

Steve Smith also didn't really shoot as well as Finley is.

Huh?

In Steve Smith's first year in SA, he shot 45.5% from the floor and 47.2% from three. This year, Finley is shooting 37.7% from the floor and 32.3% from beyond the arc. Last season, Finley shot 41.2% from the floor and 39.4% from three.


Finley takes more shots than Smith did too.

Nope.

[timvp]

As far as Elson goes, I don't think it's a good sign that he's taking so long to come back. The Spurs said that'd he'd be out 10 to 14 days. Now it's looking like it's going to be three weeks or longer.

Not the best way to show your teammates you are serious about winning.

[T Park]

Not the best way to show your teammates you are serious about winning

So its his fault the injury is worse than expected?

:lol good god.

[T Park]

This year, Finley is shooting 37.7% from the floor and 32.3% from beyond the arc.

I think the new ball had more to do with it than we thought.

Lets compare numbers before new ball after new ball, same amount of games.

I gaurantee old ball will result in even better numbers.

[timvp]

So its his fault the injury is worse than expected?

:lol good god.

Link to where it's worse than expected?

[T Park]

Link to where hes not coming back because he isn't ready, and it's not just his body?

[timvp]

Link to where hes not coming back because he isn't ready, and it's not just his body?

http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=57623

[T Park]

Francisco Elson did some light shooting Tuesday for the first time since injuring his right shoulder. Team officials said he is progressing well, but don't expect him to play for at least another week. Elson has missed the past seven games since suffering a slight tear to his rotator cuff in the Dec. 26 loss to Milwaukee. He didn't accompany the team on its trip to Denver after Tuesday's game and also won't travel to Chicago this weekend.

Elson will visit the doctor again Monday to see if he can be cleared for more strenuous basketball-related activities.


I don't see anywhere where it would say Elson is the reason hes not coming back, and not the injury.

[timvp]

So Elson isn't connected to his own shoulder?

Interesting.

:smokin

[ChumpDumper]

Did he get a cortisone shot?

[T Park]

So Elson isn't connected to his own shoulder?

Interesting

Answer me why, his shoulder not healing as quick as thought, would piss his teammates off?

[NuGGeTs-FaN]

u guys r lucky. It would take a normal human being 24-48 months to recover from this but Frankie should nut it out in a few more days :lol

[timvp]

Answer me why, his shoulder not healing as quick as thought, would piss his teammates off?

Same reason why teammates got pissed off at Beno for missing all of training camp. A two week injury shouldn't take a month to come back from, especially when you are on a team that is struggling.

[T Park]

A two week injury shouldn't take a month to come back from,

Wasn't it 2-4 weeks?

If his arm isn't strong enough, and the trainers or doctors say he shouldn't come back yet, then uh, he should just "be a man" and come back anyways?

Intelligent.

[Mr. Body]

Dude, people heal at different rates. Same as people get injured at different rates. Some people just knit up faster. And some people are Bobby Jackson.

[Kori Ellis]

Wasn't it 2-4 weeks?

If his arm isn't strong enough, and the trainers or doctors say he shouldn't come back yet, then uh, he should just "be a man" and come back anyways?

Intelligent.

No, it was 10-14 days I believe.

However, this article doesn't indicate whether he is slow healing or what the problem is.

[T Park]

Exactly.


If it was Elson "wanting to heal 100%" and he said that, Id be 100% with LJ and lambasting him for being a puss.


But if there is nothing to suggest hes being a wuss about it, then the comments are baseless IMO.

[bdictjames]

Apparently Barry gets better if he's being hit hard in the middle of the game. Just like the Kings game from December

[itzsoweezee]

Not the best way to show your teammates you are serious about winning.

wow.

it's a torn rotator cuff, ie, a serious injury.

[Kori Ellis]

wow.

it's a torn rotator cuff, ie, a serious injury.

It's barely a tear, but I get your point.

However, by original estimates, he should have been back playing by now. Or at least further along than he seems to be. Maybe he's just a slow healer.

[Mr. Body]

Let's rush him back so he has a chance to worsen the injury, shall we?

[alamo50]

:lol

[Bruno]

Elson will visit the doctor again Monday to see if he can be cleared for more strenuous basketball-related activities.

When I read this sentance, I understand that Elson has seen Spurs' doctor recently and that he has only been cleared for BB activities without contact.

I won't blame a player for not playing some regular season games while he hasn't been cleared for games.

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

I think the new ball had more to do with it than we thought.

How do you explain last year Tpark? Or was Finley shooting microfiber then too?

[T Park]

How do you explain last year Tpark?

I could've sworn a second line guy giving 12 a game against the Mavericks and helping winning games 5 and 6 was a good thing.

Guess Im wrong.

[SequSpur]

if we had webber, elson could take more maternity leave.

[midgetonadonkey]

if we had webber, elson could take more maternity leave.

That's actually funny. The SequSpur made me lol.

[boutons_]

January 11, 2007

Fitness

When It’s O.K. to Run Hurt

By GINA KOLATA

JUST before the end of last year, a prominent orthopedic surgeon was stretching to lift a heavy box and twisted his back. The pain was agonizing. He could not sit, and when he lay down he could barely get up.

So the surgeon, Dr. James Weinstein of Dartmouth College, decided to go out for a run.

“I took an anti-inflammatory, iced up, and off I went,” Dr. Weinstein recalled. When he returned, he said, he felt “pretty good.”

It sounds almost like heresy. The usual advice in treating injuries is to rest until the pain goes away. But Dr. Weinstein and a number of leading sports medicine specialists say that is outdated and counterproductive. In fact, Dr. Weinstein says, when active people consult him, he usually tells them to keep exercising.

The idea, these orthopedists and exercise specialists say, is to use common sense. If you’ve got tendinitis or sprained a muscle or tendon by doing too much, don’t go right back to exercising at the same level.

The specific advice can differ from specialist to specialist. Some, like Dr. Weinstein, say most people can continue with the sport they love although they may need to cut back a bit, running shorter distances or going more slowly. Others say to cross-train at least some of the time and others say the safest thing to do is to cross-train all the time until the pain is gone. You might end up cycling instead of running, or swimming instead of playing tennis. But unless it’s something as serious as a broken bone or a ripped ligament or muscle, stopping altogether may be the worst thing to do.

“We want to keep you moving,” said Dr. William Roberts, a sports medicine specialist at the University of Minnesota and a past president of the American College of Sports Medicine. “Injured tissue heals better if it’s under some sort of stress.”

He and others acknowledge that the advice to keep moving may come as a surprise and that some doctors feel uncomfortable giving it, worried that their patients will do too much, make things worse and then blame their doctor.

“I’m not convinced this is part of every doctor’s training or that everyone is ready to make it part of mainstream medicine,” Dr. Roberts said. “You have to work with athletes a while to figure out how to do it and how to do it well.”

“The easy way out is to say, ‘Don’t exercise,’ ” said Dr. Richard Steadman, an orthopedic surgeon in Vail, Colo., and founder of the Steadman Hawkins Research Foundation, which studies the origins and treatment of sports injuries. That advice, he added, “is safe and you probably will have healing over time.” But, he said, “if the injury is not severe, resting it will probably prolong recovery.”

Medical researchers say that they only gradually realized the importance of exercising when injured. A few decades ago, Dr. Mininder Kocher, a sports medicine specialist and orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital Boston, said doctors were so intent on forcing hurt athletes to rest that they would put injured knees or elbows or limbs in a cast for two to three months.

When the cast finally came off, the patient’s limb would be stiff, the muscles atrophied. “It would take six months of therapy to get strength and motion back,” Dr. Kocher said.

At the same time, in a parallel path, researchers were learning that painful conditions that are essentially inflammation — arthritis and chronic lower back pain — actually improve when patients keep moving.

Now some researchers, like Dr. Freddie Fu, a sports medicine expert and chairman of the orthopedic surgery department at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and a colleague, James H-C. Wang, are studying minor injuries at the molecular level.

Their focus is on tendinitis — the inflamed tendons that are the bane of many exercisers and that affect 15 to 20 percent of all Americans at any given time. The symptoms are all too familiar — pain, swelling and soreness. To study the injury process, Dr. Wang grows human tendons in the laboratory, stretching them repeatedly. In separate experiments, he has mice run on treadmills until their tendons begin to show the tiny microscopic tears that occur in the early stages of tendinitis.

So far, Dr. Wang reports, he and Dr. Fu learned some important lessons: First, forceful stretching of tendons elicits the production of molecules that are involved in inflammation. But small repeated stretching of tendons that are already inflamed leads to the production of molecules that heal inflammation. That suggests moderate exercise can actually speed healing.

And now, their preliminary results suggest that the usual treatment for tendinitis — taking drugs like aspirin or ibuprofen — can help reduce inflammation when the injury begins. But after inflammation is under way, they can make matters worse.

But medical experts caution that people have to be careful if they try to exercise when they are injured.

Some, like Dr. Fu, who is himself a cyclist, Dr. Roberts, and Dr. Steadman say the first priority is to see a doctor and get an accurate diagnosis in order to rule out a serious injury.

Others, like Dr. Weinstein, say that such an injury, a broken bone or a torn Achilles tendon, for example, has symptoms so severe that it is obvious something is really wrong.

“If you had inflammation and swelling that was very tender to the touch, you would know,” Dr. Weinstein said. And if you tried to exercise, it would hurt so much that you just could not do it.

Dr. Weinstein’s advice for injured patients is among the boldest — he said it’s based on his basic research and his own experience with sports injuries, like knee pain and tendinitis of the Achilles and hamstring. Before exercise, he said, take one anti-inflammatory pill, like an aspirin. Ice the area for 20 minutes. Then start your usual exercise, the one that resulted in your injury, possibly reducing the intensity or time you would have spent. When you finish, ice the injured area again.

The advice involving an anti-inflammatory pill, Dr. Weinstein said, is based on something surgeons know — in most cases, a single anti-inflammatory pill before surgery results in less pain and swelling afterward. It also is consistent with Dr. Wang’s research because, at least in theory, it should forestall new inflammation from the exercise that is about to occur.

The icing is to constrict blood vessels before and after exercise, thereby preventing some of the inflammatory white blood cells from reaching the injured tissue.

Dr. Steadman, who works with injured athletes in his clinic, does not advise trying to go back to your old exercise on your own until the pain is completely gone. Play it safe, he said, and cross-train.

But others, like Dr. Fu and Dr. Kocher, are more inclined to suggest trying your old sport. Both also tell injured patients to ice before and after exercising. Dr. Kocher said he sometimes advises taking an anti-inflammatory pill, but worries about masking pain so much that patients injure themselves even more by overdoing the exercise.

His rule of thumb, Dr. Kocher said, is that if the pain is no worse after exercising than it is when the person simply walks, then the exercise “makes a lot of sense.”

It also helps patients psychologically, he added. “If you take athletes or active people out, they get depressed, they get wacky,” Dr. Kocher explained.

Noah Hano knows all about that.

Mr. Hano, 34, a commercial real estate broker in Boston, was competing in marathons and triathlons. Then he developed severe sciatica, whose pain is a direct result of inflammation. He tried physical therapy, he tried acupuncture, he tried massage therapy, but nothing quelled the “nagging, terrible pain” down his leg, he said.

He stopped exercising, but the pain persisted.

“I started getting desperate,” Mr. Hano said. His father, who lives in the same town as Dr. Weinstein, suggested that Mr. Hano call the Dartmouth orthopedist. Dr. Weinstein told him to continue to exercise. Mr. Hano could not wait to get started. “I drove to the gym and ran on the treadmill,” he said. “When I woke up the next morning, I went for a swim and rode my bike. It hurt, but when the doctor told me I wasn’t going to be paralyzed, it made it a lot easier.”

Dr. Weinstein said that Mr. Hano’s problem was a huge, bulging disk, a herniation so severe that most doctors would say he should stop running immediately. Dr. Weinstein, though, thought exercise would help Mr. Hano heal. His treatment was a single injection of cortisone into the inflamed area around his disk. The sciatica gradually went away. And Mr. Hano continues to run.

“I had faith that I was going to be able to work through it,” Mr. Hano said. “I don’t want to not do what I like just because I’m in pain.”

[angel_luv]

Of course, with the Spurs' roster filled with so many foreign-born players, there were also a few of Bonner's teammates who didn't care.

"I asked Manu (Ginobili), 'Hey, did you watch the game last night?' Bonner said. "He was like, 'What game?' He was dead serious. He had no clue.

"I was like, 'Oh, just forget it.'"

:lol