Injury Thread: Tony Parker's Anke (Update: Out 4 weeks)

[tmtcsc]

The good news is: Tony is a fast healer. As great as TP has been for us, relying on him to produce at the same level or to count on him in the playoffs is dangerous. Teams know how to stop him and once they do, we are toast. If they clog the lane and put a taller defender who has some speed on him, he's done.

Hopefully, the injury will change the dynamics of the team and we won't rely on him as much to be successful. I fully realize that sounds crazy but its true. It happened against the Lakers when they came back from a 2-0 deficit and it happened last year against OKC when they did the same. Tony got discombobulated and turned the ball over and it threw everything out of whack. Don't get me wrong, he's improved tremendously in all areas but I won't trust him in the playoffs until he can do it consistently. --> Which he hasn't. If Cleveland had somebody to guard him in 2007, he wouldn't have won MVP and we wouldn't have swept them.

Our success in the playoffs this year will come from the team adjusting to when other teams try similar tactics. The next few weeks will help the team prepare for it. I'm not too concerned. If we lose homecourt, we lose homecourt. It didn't do us any good last year. To win the Championship you have to win on the road and battle through adversity. Last year, winning 20 games in a row was a detriment. The Spurs forgot what it took to respond to a loss. They forgot how important winning game 5's were. , by the time they reached the WCF, they hadn't played in one.

[HarlemHeat37]

Hopefully the Spurs get a 1st round bye(Utah), tbh..

[txstr1986]

At least this happened now and not a month from now.

Time to see what CoJo can do!

[superjames1992]

I hope he is at 100% for the playoffs, tbh.

[superjames1992]

The good news is: Tony is a fast healer.

He's not getting any younger, though.

[ginobilized]

Silver lining: others step up and Manu gets it together

Worst case: we ride Duncan and Manu too hard and another player gets injured or they run out of gas by the playoffs

I hope TP heals fully and can get back to his previous level by the playoffs

[TVI]

I am telling you. Manu ing Ginobili is going to go off in the month of march.

this.

The Spurs are deep enough to get the through this. The silver lining is, they'll have time to learn how to play without completely depending on Parker, which could help them with the whole "big guards give Parker trouble" thing.

[Spurs21Fan4Ever]

You guys will probably think i"m crazy, but I had the exact same injury a few years ago and I was out 5 weeks. It's painful, but when it fully heals, feels like nothing ever happened. And the good news is Tony Parker is probably way tougher than me and he has professional trainers to help him out. No doubt Parker will be 100% by the playoffs. It was amazing to me how all of the sudden my ankle was 100%. The only thing that does worry me though, it the possibility of slight tweaks to it. To this day I will occasionally tweak my ankle randomly, and it will feel as painful as when I first sprained it, and I'll have to sit out a day or two. It will even swell up a tiny bit, but on around the third day it felt like nothing ever happened. I'm sure the trainers will help with that issue for Parker, but I am slightly worried of the possibility that he tweaks his ankle during the playoffs causing him to miss a game, but most likely that won't happen. Prayers for Parker and hoping the team steps up without him and role players get better because of this! This could be a blessing in disguise, but I still prefer that Parker never got injured.

[Strategic]

Class 2 sprain means ligament damage. 4 weeks might be on the low side to be honest...especially with it being his left (and bad) ankle.

Tony's first step is the strength of his offensive game, not to mention what he needs to cover a quick perimeter player. Hopefully the four weeks is what it will take to get that strength back 100%. Pop can patch the PG position with Manu, Neal and a little bit of the others, or he can seperate out the man from the boys considering De Colo, Mills and Joseph. The catch is that now he needs a starting and back up point guard to come forward.

[look_at_g_shred]

Now you all get your ing wish no more hero ball. Hope you guys are happy...

[Hoops Czar]

Typically bads per pars.

Get over yourself. The Spurs are way too reliant on TP. They aren't winning a championship with Mr. Everything having to do it all. In all seriousness, this is the perfect opportunity for other players not named Tony to step it up. If the Spurs can survive injuries from Manu and Timmy, I think they can survive without Parker for four weeks. And with a stroke of luck, the Spurs might just find their backup pg.

[Joyrider]

Also blows that Parker didn't get POTM but the le was handed to Bryant for a 9-4 record.

[spurraider21]

Well this will certainly force the backup point guards to step up

[look_at_g_shred]

Remember last season when Manu went down, everyone thought our season was done? We didn't skip a beat. It also paved the way for a player to step up and breakout (green). Hopefully that's the case this time for CoJo.

[timvp]

A scary factor is how screwed the Spurs would be in Duncan or Ginobili go down right now. Expecting them both to be healthy for a month straight at this stage of their careers is ........ ambitious.

[Robz4000]

A scary factor is how screwed the Spurs would be in Duncan or Ginobili go down right now. Expecting them both to be healthy for a month straight at this stage of their careers is ........ ambitious.

Considering how home heavy this stretch is on top of the amount of rest between games, it shouldn't be too much. However, someone besides Tim and Manu is gonna have to step up.

[DrunkTXLabrat]

how do 1st round picks work for playoff teams? does the pick get better based on playoff exit or regular season record?

[GB20]

hopefully he is out three weeks but he was looking kind of tired for the last 4 games

[Darkwaters]

Don't you think if they thought it was worse they would've said 4-6 or 4-8 weeks instead?

Hard to say. I didn't assess the patient. But I do know that class 2 means ligament damage. And that by itself is concerning.

[siraulo23]

Not enough time for Parker to recover to 100% before the playoffs begin and for the team to start gelling and find a definitive rotation

Let's hope 4 weeks is the worst case scenario and Parker gets back on the court much sooner.
Spurs have to hope for a favorable matchup in the first round if Parker is not gonna be a 100% for a while

[siraulo23]

Again, the first 48 hours is so key. Spurs have a head of the class training facility and I expect that the Docs and trainer, Will Sevening, already have Tony on cryotherapy keeping the injured ankle cold to minimize the swelling. Once they control that, then they run the MRI to see the grade of the sprain. Since he came off a jump, the velocity is such that it's amplified...HOWEVER...when I look at it, it's not that he just turned it to the side, his foot came forward at the ball first and then he turned. In that case, that's not a bad thing, it means he didn't just go straight to the side for a typical inversion sprain which would result in a higher grade injury. Grade 2 means severe stretching and that is 2 weeks no on court play and then however long until training and Pop feel he's good to come back.

The possible complicating thing is if the force was re-directed and then became a high ankle sprain, that means it involves the ligaments not only in the ankle, it also includes the ligament above the ankle that joins the 2 lower leg bones. When that gets injured, it's an automatic 4-6 weeks of just straight healing. Let's hope that the syndesmotic ligament aka tib-fib ligaments aren't affected.

Again, it's critical to minimize swelling and then to see the alignment. I've hypothesized from the Duncan scare that I feel a team as equipped as San Antonio already knows what a normal x-ray or MRI looks like for TP. It's how much difference between normal and the ones taken after the injury that will help them determine course of action for treatment. It's the beginning of March and that means the teams have 6 weeks until the playoffs give or take, let's just hope TP's ankle is a no more than a grade 2 sprain and that he is a quick healer so we see him on the court in 3 weeks limited with the 4th week a giant uptick in minutes player to help Tony get back what he calls, "my ritim."
I plan on watching the team there at the end of the month and I hope to see him on the court.
Go TP...heal thyself!

Props tbh, let's hope he's back 2-3 weeks

[Kidd K]

It sucks Parker went down now right when we were primed to start putting together our final rotations and defensive schemes. I guess at least this didn't happen 2 months from now. Then we'd be completely ed. Luckily, Manu seems to be somewhat reasonably healthy, so he can take over more ballhandling duties. Then again, we don't want to see Manu pushed too hard until the WCF and Finals. :\

looked like a regular sprain, IMO... Non-Issue

Most of them look similar, whether they're really terrible or not. I've seen guys roll their ankles "normally", but it end up being grade 3 sprains which can have 5-6 week recovery periods. And even then, ankle stiffness for weeks. Supposedly Tony's is just a grade 2, but that still means a ligament tear.

Parker's probably going to be kept out longer than he normally would be to prevent further injury. We will probably lose the top seed because of this. I really hate that loss to the Suns now, and that Pistons loss. We may have been able to retain the top seed if not for those failures. Just gotta hope OKC tanks a few games now. Go Westbrook.

[spurs10]

A scary factor is how screwed the Spurs would be in Duncan or Ginobili go down right now. Expecting them both to be healthy for a month straight at this stage of their careers is ........ ambitious.

Ouch...I was just wondering before the game how long it would be before one of them gets injured. That question has been answered. The idea of more than one of them being down is indeed 'scary.'

[DeadlyDynasty]

Great news

[Proxy]

Only two road games this month at least.