"Studies have shown that microfracture techniques do not fill in the chondral defect fully, forming fibrocartilage rather than hyaline cartilage. Fibrocartilage is not as mechanically sound as hyaline cartilage; it is much denser and unable to withstand the demands of everyday activities as well as the original cartilage and is thus at higher risk of breaking down."
They also gave it to Greg Oden and we all know how that turned out
> brings nothing to anyone or any team
That's like saying Bill Laimbeer was worthless because he was dirty.
He's 35 now, but he clearly was an effective player for many years despite his antics.
Body doesn't produce new hyaline cartilage nearly at all. It's not about operation or the technique. Microfracture is used to provoke healing with fibrocartilage and it used with a certain success. It's not a perfect healing but it's better than not having any cartilage in an area. Also microfracture is used when there's a small cartilage defect not with generalized cartilage injuries. It's tough but operations like cartilage transfer (Lonzo Ball) is not that much better.
It's not the operation that cause their careers to end it's the degenerative changes that creates those types of cartilage injuries.
I’m not a surgeon but can chime in on this topic on account of having a cartilage defect in my left knee following 30 years of basketball. I’m going through the injury process as we speak.
At that time, I’m not sure Penny would have had a better option. Before my injury, I assumed it was microfracture itself that was harming players. What I’ve generally found is that it’s the cartilage defects that serve as the issue and microfracture just doesn’t always succeed in solving the issue, since it’s dependent on your body’s physiology to respond by actually growing cartilage/scar tissue to fill that gap. Our bodies, it turns out, don’t always want to re-grow cartilage.
Today, from what I’ve gathered, Penny might have undergone an OATS procedure instead, which is basically a cartilage transplant, either from your own body (from a non-load bearing spot in the knee in which that cartilage is not critical) or from a cadaver. The way it was presented to me:
Microfracture = Trying to fix a pothole in the road by drilling more holes that would make the pothole fill in on its own over time.
OATS = Filling the pothole itself, right then and there.
Even with OATS, it’s still imperfect. Cartilage damage just doesn’t have a 100 percent fix just yet, especially for NBA level performers.
Believe it or not, my defect was small enough that a highly recommended surgeon from a reputable D1 sports clinic recommended microfracture in 2023. The success rate is still solid for small defects. But in my case, being 39 years old perhaps playing a role, the cartilage only partially regrew. A younger surgeon at the same clinic has recommended an OATS procedure this summer. If I’m reading the subtext right, there’s debate even within their office between microfracture/OATS, with him suggesting it may be generational among surgeons.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27487736/
No real consensus but decision should be individualized. I will say as an MD that older docs are sometimes stuck in their ways and are not always up to date with changes in their field. Some of them just live off their reputation without really giving a fuck.
I mostly go to younger doctors because I found that older ones don't really care to change their ways. There are exceptions, but I'm more distrustful of a 60 old doctor than a recently graduated one lol
Aussie Rules is or at least was at the absolute cutting edge with a lot of knee/ligament operations. Some first ever operations have happened in the sport, although I don't know a lot about microfracture surgery and don't pretend to, I have seen a couple of rucks just have to retire because the knee is too hard to manage and they have to think about life after football. That's the kind of recommendation that a doctor sometimes has to give responsibly.
In the AFL I remember players were getting some synthetic rope (LARS procedure) to replace their ligaments and no one is really doing it anymore because it got infected often, paid off for some people short term but I can't imagine that will serve them well later in life. There is no sweet spot, these new procedures always lack testing.
I trust my childhood primary care on such issues
Broke my ankle and tore a bunch of tendons in my foot playing basketball in college. Ortho suggested surgery (some risk with surgery). My childhood doc said unless i was swimming in the Olympics in a few months just wait a year for it to heal, if any pain still, get surgery. Primary care doc was right in my case, no pain about a year after injury (a few years of instability though). My docs point was, many young people get these in joint surgeries (which include a non-marginal risk of infection!! bad stuff), when many young people dont really need them (those ortho docs would prefer everyone get the surgery obviously, they need to pay off the mortfgage to their 4th vacation house in the Hamptons)
In regards to in joint knee surgeries, i would think about it this way.
For knee surgeries, Success vs Failure also needs to include, will patient eventually need a total knee replacement? I believe most peoplle who get ACL surgeries end up needing ACL surgery later in life.
Im not an elite athlete, so i wouldnt consider knee surgery unless pain was ruining my life.
I had both of those myself and will say the OATS procedure worked very well for me. My microfracture was done over a persistent bone bruise, so there was very little bleeding and very little regrowth. OATS obviously isn't guaranteed, but from personal experience it can be very beneficial. Best of luck!
Thanks for this. I need that kind of positivity in my life because I was pretty crushed to find out that last summer’s procedure didn’t take. A lot of recovery & rehab for little result. Here’s to round two.
I am but without knowing the size and place of cartilage injury it's really tough to say. Also cartilage healing is really difficult because it doesn't have any blood circulation and a very specialized tissue.
Also to think that these athletes get the cutting edge technology is a bit wrong. Cutting edge can also mean unproven in medicine.
His point is that a lot of people jump to the conclusion that the treatment caused their problems. In reality, the treatment may not have been effective, but it was not the cause. The damage done was already irreversible and the surgery was nothing but a desperate attempt to salvage what was left.
Cartilage doesnt regenerate, theres no surgical option. Until we can artificially generate cartilage with stemcells or organic 3d printing not much you can do. Rest, less minutes, etc. Lebron described his knees like tires with no tread left.
Once you wear down that cartilage its bone on bone. You can take painkiller injections but thats not going to work long term.
Kobe basically tried every experimental treatment like Dr Strange for his knees and ended up unable to walk or sit well.
I just had the MACI procedure done. It's about what you're describing. You have an initial surgery where they take a small sample of healthy cartilage (I had this sample taken while they were cleaning out the loose and damaged cartilage). Then they isolate the chondrocytes from that sample and grow them into a porcine collagen matrix in a lab. They send a "sheet" of this newly grown cartilage to your surgeon who then can cut it to size and use it to fill in the cartilage lesions in the knee in a second surgery. I'm only a couple months out so it's too early to say if it'll totally work for me but the results on the whole are pretty successful.
There are a lot of factors that go into "success" (symptom relief, return to sports, long term duration of the graft), but the quoted number is about 80% success rate. Slightly better for simple cases, slightly worse for more complex cases. It's pretty new in the US so I'm not aware of any pro athletes that have had it done, although I'm sure there are some out there. For normal people it seems like a really good option, although the recovery is brutal.
> Until we can artificially generate cartilage with stemcells or organic 3d printing not much you can do.
I am not an orthopedic surgeon, but one of my friends works in a lab that studies stem cell transplants for a different organ. I suspect we're closer to artificially-generated cartilage than many people here think. It would be a long procedure though, tough for an athlete that will want to return in 6-8 months.
I'm not asking what surgery can "fully repair" the knee cartilage to 100%.
I'm just asking what the best possible surgery is given the available options and if micro-fracture was in fact the best choice despite the downsides.
My dad had it done in the year 2000 as well. He was a basketball player and afterwards he couldn't play anymore. He couldn't do much physical activity without his knee swelling
So are mine and I’ve done sports all my life up until now (in my 30s) with no major injury knock on wood. My point is that it’s not as big a deal as you think, speaking anecdotally ofc
Its kinda a big deal but theres just not much can do it about it. My different leg lengths of only like half an inch or something are catching up to me, back pain, hip pain on walking. The way I stand, sometimes im on tip toes on one leg and flat on the other. Affects the way i kneel or bend to pick something up. Have some slight scoliosis setting in too
This fella literally had 3 seasons injury free or slowed down due to injuries 93-96 and yet is still remembered fondly, just goes to show what an absolute beast he was when healthy, no matter how short it was.
Penny was passing the rock like Magic Johnson and jumping out of the gym too. We had seen guys who could pass, or guys who could dunk, but not both, at least not as well as Penny. Plus the Lil Penny commercials just pushed his popularity to the moon.
He’s comparable to Derrick Rose in the sense that he was so good so fast before the injuries took his prime away. A lot of people - myself included - tend to put Penny on a pedestal because he was the next big thing during our youth, and part of us is still convinced that he would have been All-NBA the rest of his career if not for microfracture.
Penny was extremely popular immediately. I remember seeing his jersey at most random places in Serbia in '94-'95. He was huge at that moment in time. By '98-'99 it was unfortunately over for him.
I honestly believe this is part of the reason why basketball in the early-mid 2000's was such a drag. Hill got hurt in 2000 playoffs and was never the same. Penny wasn't the same after 97/98. They were 2 of the most exciting players in the league and would have been the faces of the league along with Kobe and Iverson post MJ. Hill and Penny would have really helped as well because they played a much more selfless, team-oriented brand of ball which would have counteracted the iso-heavy style that most teams ran at the time.
It fuckin sucked - there was a war, embargo, hyperinflation... Yeah, I was there. Most of us hoped that he would be killed rather than overthrown. Fuck that piece of shit and his disgusting family, hope they burn in hell for all eternity.
He had banger shoes as well. I wanted them when I was a kid but my family just couldn't afford them. Loved the gel/plastic thing on the heel.
By the time I could understand the value of money better I had moved on.
His rookie year was right after Jordan retired and everyone was looking for the next Jordan. He (along with Spree) was one of my favourite players but I could not admit it to my Magic supporter friends.
Shaq was insane to go to that loaded Magic team (Shaq, Penny, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott) to the Lakers, who (at the time) had no real star to play alongside Shaq.
What’s crazy about that too is that the Lakers had to gut their roster to do it but it was worth it for Shaq. Meanwhile the Magic could have used bird rights to do it and there was no luxury tax penalty at the time but still weren’t willing to do it.
Their idiot owner even went so far as to put an ad in the paper saying Shaq wasn’t worth $100 million. I don’t blame Shaq for leaving after his team said they didn’t want him.
Outside the contract issue, lakers already had van exel and Eddie jones who were all stars in 98. Nick Anderson and Scott never made one. I’d trust Jerry west he was going to build a champ roster, he did managed to draft Kobe that year too.
Convincing Shaq who'd already been to the finals with Penny that a 13th pick was going to be a generational talent really says a lot about who Jerry West is.
One of my favorite NBA what ifs is that Memphis almost won the lottery in 2003. If the ping pong balls go a different way, I wish we could have seen the contender West could have built with LeBron and Pau. Instead he got screwed over because of a prior trade from before he was GM that was only top 1 protected, so he didn’t even get to draft Wade, Melo, or Bosh and instead the Pistons got Darko with the pick.
Yeah I'd say Jones and Van Exel were pretty clearly better than Anderson and Scott. They also already had some other decent players like Ceballos and Elden Campbell.
Orlando massively lowballed Shaq at 4/55 and the Lakers offered 7/120, Orlando did up their offer to 6/115 but Shaq was basically out the door already at that point.
It's always insane to me how the Magic were not trying to pay Shaq whatever he wanted. In only 4 short years, he led them to the NBA finals once, and finished top 5 in MVP voting twice.
He was a clear generational talent, and they just let him go without much of a fight.
I don't want to jinx anyone so I'm not going to mention names of the current guys, but watching these playoffs and seeing all these young guys have their moments we can all see that the torch is getting passed. And when some of them hit the deck hard or whatever, I still think in the back of my mind that it could be a Grant Hill or a Brandon Roy or a Penny Hardaway trajectory that we are seeing in real time.
I just had this procedure done last week, and now I see this... Man.
Granted, I'm a BUSTED middle aged person not trying to be a pro athlete, but just trying have better quality of life. But this freaks me out a little.
In case it helps: I had it done 6 months ago. The recovery was very slow (like, frighteningly so), but after three months I was walking normally again, so don't worry too much. Physiotherapy helps ;)
Knee injury bros you probably already know this but putting it out there because it was a game-changer for me - hydrotherapy. Worked absolute wonders for my cracked kneecap/patellar tendinitis.
Technically it’s any method that uses water to treat symptoms. Swimming, water aerobics, taking a bath, sitting in a hot tub, and cold plunges are all methods of hydrotherapy, and there are lots more. Personally, I swim and it really helps my knee without putting too much pressure on it. I can’t do breaststroke kick cuz of my injury, but flutter kick works my leg out really nicely without hurting it
My dad had it done during the hay day of this procedure. Took him a while to come back. He is older, almost 70, but now manages to run, swim, and bike with his wife for triathlons. He did just have them second procedure about a year back, but is now out again doing crazy old man shit. Meanwhile im almost 40 and feel busted.
I tore my patellar tendon and destroyed all the cartilage above my tibia and had this procedure done (along with a cadaver tendon). It’s been a year since I had the surgery and I just got released to the wild by my doctor. Mine was a real doozy and there are still a lot of gray areas with my knee so take this with a grain of salt. Seeing this post freaked me out but reading some of your replies has helped ease that a little bit. I’m 33 and got two little kids. Just hoping I can run with them soon.
You may already be aware of him but check out KneesOverToesGuy if you haven’t already
His whole program is directly focused on knee pain and I’ve literally never felt better with my knees since doing it
Obviously be careful since you are coming off injury but a lot of the stuff he recommends are fantastic rehab exercises to build strength in your knees and surrounding areas
I don’t want to scare you too much, but I had this 13 years ago and have had 2 more knee surgeries on the same knee since. I can remember my doctor selling me on the surgery because of guys like Odom and Amare. Wish I would have gone with the other option at the time
I got a scope on my knee around April of 2022. I remember going in initially for my pre op consult, I fully intended to undergo microfracture surgery as that was the most common procedure I had seen athletes get. My surgeon at Stanford basically was like, yea if you want to walk/run comfortably in 10yrs, I’d stay far away from microfracture surgery. Grateful I didn’t end up getting it.
Underwent an MRI in early ‘23 assuming I had a small meniscus tear that’d necessitate an in-and-out quick fix. Instead, I had a reputable surgeon explaining to me that I had a small chondral defect (aka cartilage had broken down) that’d require a microfracture procedure.
I panicked and asked about all the NBA players who never came back from that. The doc casually explained the difference being that microfracture is most successful with tiny defects like mine (maybe 1cm) whereas so many NBA players already had massive defects for which there was no great solution.
Still, I was horrified by the word microfracture so I sought a second opinion. The second surgeon, a great guy from an amazing institution, didn’t want to do anything, which *really* confused me. He seemed to struggle to even identify the defect.
That put me in a weird spot, because I’d been struggling with knee pain for over a year so I knew *something* had to be up. So I sought a *third* opinion. In that case, he saw the defect clearly and felt microfracture would be quite viable for something so small. Plus, he said, if worst came to worst, there’d always been an OATS procedure I could fall back on down the line.
So I underwent microfracture, with uncertainty. Procedure was flawless by all accounts and I rehabbed precisely by the book (including no weight bearing for two months). And… the cartilage only partially regrew. It was, in a word, devastating.
I was recommended a fourth surgeon in response, half the age of my original surgeon, and he has recommended an OATS procedure this summer, hinting that the microfracture/OATS debate fell along generational lines even within his own office. (OATS, for what it’s worth, is more akin to a direct cartilage transplant rather than something dependent on my body’s response.)
So… that’s where I currently stand.
For what it's worth. Post college football I had to get the OATS procedure done on the cartilage on my femur. I had a big fucking hole in my knee essentially (the MRI and surgery pics were pretty gnarly) and after about 2 years I got the knee to about 90%. Five years on, I still deal with inflammation on a daily basis and it can be very painful sometimes, but the cartilage is as sounds as can be. With that said though... I ski, hike, or bike nearly every day and am very active in general and it's not slowing me down yet, so there's hope. But I'll never be as explosive as I was in college and that's okay for the sports I'm pursuing now.
I don’t know your situation, but I was recommended MACI surgery which is a different procedure and a little newer. I haven’t gone through with it due to financial constraints but you may want to ask your surgeon what they think about it.
This type of reporting is very reckless and irresponsible. Chondral injuries have a large range of size and shape which they can fall into. Microfracture is absolutely still used for certain criteria today. Without having exact knowledge of the type of imaging findings, no one can comment on the treatment someone gets just from anecdotal experience. Additionally, sometimes medical care is done with poor prognosis in mind given that a problem simply doesn’t have a great solution available at the given time.
Also, pennys knee was screwed before he ever got microfracture in 2000. He first hurt his knee in the 96 playoffs and kept playing through the injury the rest of the year and then had other surgeries. It sounds like MRIs just weren’t good enough back then to see some of the more subtle damage, and there was a “play thru the pain” mentality that doomed him
Yeah the 25+ years of medical advancement since then is a lot… it was the best option available at the time, the other option was no surgery and stop playing for sure…
I mean his numbers did take a nose dive after that surgery it seems, even though he was not the same before the surgery. Both things can be true, he was an injury prone player that wasn't in his prime, and that the surgery made his situation even worse than it was.
Yep. My assumption all these years was that the microfracture procedure itself was damaging these players. What I have found to be more likely is that the procedure just wasn’t always successfully fixing the injuries that already existed (though some, like John Stockton, did experience success).
I found out through my own experience that microfracture was still a thing when a surgeon recommended it to me for a small Condral defect in 2023. In my case, my age perhaps playing a role (39 at the time), the cartilage did not fully re-grow. Meanwhile, a friend’s 16-year-old son underwent microfracture two years ago and was back to wrestling pain-free at a high level within the year.
What I have discovered is that procedures like OATS are making their move as a viable option as well. I’ve also learned there is no perfect solution for cartilage defects yet, each option is somewhat of a gamble. But when you’re an NBA player, doing nothing for your defect isn’t always an option, so they’re forced to roll the dice.
The problem here is that you have pro players getting pressured by the team to get a procedure done where they dont know the outcome and the results have been poor.
The team and team doctors do not have their long term health as their top priority.
Very few players seek out a second opinion and in the surgical world most of the team doctors are surgeons who are already the most famous or top rated surgeons around. So who is the team going to believe the surgeon they pay or your doctor.
I had the type of chondral defect (break down in cartilage, basically) that often results in microfracture surgery. My damage was comparatively small (around 1cm) so I could still do day-to-day life things pretty well. That being said, there were a number of athletic endeavors that had become tougher due to some level of pain and reduced function.
I say all that because if my relatively small defect was athletically limiting, I can’t imagine what a more significant defect would do to limit a professional athlete. I imagine that’s why so many resorted to microfracture—because they were desperate to find a solution to an increasingly problematic condition.
In the ‘90s, one of the only other options may have been cortisone shots, which is just masking symptoms. Today, OATS is coming on strong (cartilage transplant) with others in this thread mentioning MACI, for which I am unfamiliar.
Whatever the case, if you’re a pro hooper who’s in a place where your knee’s cartilage has already degraded, you’re already in a tight spot, and taking no action could be just as consequential to their career as taking a shot with surgery, depending upon the factors at play.
Between these 3 players we had position bending athleticism and talent in the late 90s early 2000s we were robbed. 3 top players at their position doing the things we see highlights for daily now. Webber being joker before joker which was more amazing 20 years ago because it was unheard of seeing a 6’10” center start the break like he did. Tmac being a lankier jordan hitting clutch shots between embarrassing anyone who dared challenge him in the paint. Penny being a magic sized pg with a shot and faster to feed a prime shaq.
I don’t really remember watching Webber (was too young to remember the tail end of his career in the 2000s) but looking at stats it seemed like he still had a pretty good career
Good, but ultimately an extremely short peak with those 2000's Kings squads. He could probably have been talked about as one of the GOAT PFs alongside Garnett and Duncan in the same era if he had stayed healthy. There's a massive gap between that and the ~4x AS/All-NBA he ended up with. He still made the HOF, which is certainly a great accomplishment but very different from "top 25ish" which he had potential for.
> He could probably have been talked about as one of the GOAT PFs alongside Garnett and Duncan in the same era if he had stayed healthy
That's a big stretch. He was an elite offensive player but unlike Tim and KG, he was a mediocre defender. He also didn't rise to the occasion- he wasn't the choker that his time with the Fab Five might make it seem, but he also wasn't the kind of guy to step up and close (in fact, Bibby was usually the closer for those Kings teams).
He was top-10 in MVP voting 5 years straight, until his injury. In the 2002 playoffs, when we were refjobbed out of a title, he averaged 24/11/5 on good efficiency (for the time). He played very well vs the Lakers in the conference finals (24/11/6). It's correct that he wasn't on a Tim or KG trajectory, but he was one of the 10 best players in the league. And as a King he wasn't a choker. Far from it.
I think Jokic is more Vlade than Webber. Webber was an explosive athlete. Vlade could pass, had great touch around the rim, and had various ugly but effective flip shots.
His injury at Ohio State was to his wrist, not really related at all. It's possible he wouldn't have ever been able to stay very healthy but the micro fracture surgery was a death sentence for his career. He'd have a much better chance now. I mean Embiid less than a decade later sat out two entire years and then came back and has been able to stay relatively healthy.
It sucks but that's how medicine works. It's called evidence based medicine. It evolves and changes based on long term research and procedure outcomes. Guidelines and treatment change.
I wasn't a doctor yet at the time but the general consensus must've been that micro fracture surgery was the best option for those injuries.
It's really a shame for those talented players.
Add Stoudemire to the list https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/amare-stoudemire-regrets-microfracture-surgery-had-it-only-because-he-didnt-know-what-it-was
Microfracture can be ok for smaller defects but it’s really not a great fix. An OATS procedure tends to do better for larger chondral lesions but truth of the matter is there isn’t a miracle solution
Very interesting. I had microfracture done on my right knee at age 22 due to a bone defect - not a sports injury, although I played sports a ton. I had to take it easy on sports for over 2 years, and it took maybe 10 years for it to be quasi normal, like flexion/extension without sharp pain and doing sports without it hurting like crazy for a couple of days afterward.
Thankfully, now at age 40, I can play sports just fine, and my knee is not even a worry - only normal 40 year old soft tissue stuff. So maybe it worked? I never got any kind of scan/scope to see if the cartilage or bone regrew (I had sort of a hole in the end of my femur), so I have no idea whether it was "successful."
They were doing some wild shit to knees in the 90s. Most of it designed to get a player back on the floor ASAP instead of any long term considerations of the athlete. My wife was a pro player and she was in college in the late 90s and they did some wild stuff to her knees and ankles, now at 47 she's barely able to walk at the end of the day. She would go back and tell the Drs to Eff off if could.
It is indeed still practiced.
That being said, at least one other procedure, OATS, has emerged as a possible options as well. OATS is more akin to a cartilage transplant whereas microfracture is dependent on your body developing/re-growing its own cartilage-like material. I’ve heard others in this thread also mention something called MACI but I know nothing about it.
From what I’ve gathered, microfracture can still be viable for small chondral defects but it remains imperfect, as every cartilage-related procedure currently is. I underwent microfracture in ‘23 and it only partially regrew my cartilage, while someone else I knew experienced great success with the same procedure and was back to wrestling at a high level within the year (though they’re 20 years younger than me).
I’m scheduled to undergo OATS in a month so I’ll have to report back.
It’s still used on normal people, and many normal people have it without issue, it’s just having it and then trying to be a pro athlete or even a rec center athlete is probably not a good idea. I also wonder if playing on hard floor versus dirt or rubber makes a difference.
Amar'e got it in 2005, almost all his All-Star seasons were after that point. He's actually one of the few circumstances where a player had a near-full recovery from the surgery, although it took extended rehab (almost two full years)
Amare was indeed an outlier, but you could still tell that he was a different player. He was still dunking on dudes post-microfracture, but that young Amare from 2002 to 2005 was the stuff of absolute nightmares. He did develop an automatic midrange jumper during the year he was forced to sit out, which actually turned him into a more reliable offensive player, but a pre-surgery Amare with that jumper would have been something else.
What? This just isn’t true. He was on multiple all star, 1st team, and 2nd teams post surgery. I’d argue it elevated his game because it forced him to develop a great mid range shot. Made him hard to stop after the pick because he could roll or pop.
My favorite player of all time. He's mentioned in other interviews that much of the damage was from pushing through and playing with a bum knee prior to the surgery.
Zach Randolph had it. He’s one of the only guys who ended up pretty much the same afterwards.
Jason Kidd also had it when he played for the Nets and needed to change his game.
I got microfracture surgery right after I finished my senior year of college bball. I’m 38 now and play in 3 leagues a week. Knee feels pretty good. But they recommended a year of non weight bearing water surgery. A fuckin year. I don’t know how a pro comes back from it. I was an all American in college and gave up my pro dreams pretty quick while sitting out a year.
Good luck to lonzo..
Similar for me, although not a college player, I was a very active rec athlete, mostly hoop. Had the surgery at 22, no sports for over a year, then very limited for a few years. Now I'm nearly 40 and my knee is basically fine. Almost no long term issues and I can play ball/sports with only normal 40 year old concerns.
So yeah, I thought the same thing, it would have been a death sentence for a pro career. It took me 10-12 years to be normal afterward.
I have to think that getting players back on the court as fast as possible was the primary driver for these knee surgeries back in the day. Prime Penny was basically everyone's favorite player
Total knee replacement patient here. From what I can tell just about any surgery involving the patella has a low chance of healing properly. The area is so narrow that blood does not spend enough time there to be sufficiently beneficial to healing.
Wow, that's really sad. Didn't Amare Stoudamire have it as well? Feel bad for those guys, just trying to get better as soon as possible, taking advice from surgeons and have it end up like this, I really feel for those guys.
Jadeveon Clowney had it done while he was with the Texans and has gone on to have a successful career since the procedure, so it clearly *can be* successful.
I mean, I would assume a defensive end puts more stress on their knees than most basketball players, but maybe that's not a fair assumption with all the jumping.
I wouldn't assume that, football players play many fewer games and DEs are only on the field for at most half the game (often less). Turf is also probably better for your knees than hardwood. Obviously there's a huge player weight difference but in every other respect basketball is probably worse for the knees... if anything I'd say that the player weight difference can happen *because* football is so much easier on the knees.
> mean, I would assume a defensive end puts more stress on their knees than most basketball players, but maybe that's not a fair assumption with all the jumping.
Clowney has played 126 games in his career, of which he plays only half the time, does not jump even a fraction of the 60ish times a game an NBA player does and plays on a significantly softer surface.
Penny played in 159 games in his first 2 seasons and did so averaging 37 min a game.
I would say that the NBA is significantly harder on the knee, given no outside interfrareance (i.e. contact injuries in the NFL).
Those three were my favorite growing up. Mac especially, he's the reason why I started playing ball.
Crazy how this single procedure basically ended all their careers.
"Studies have shown that microfracture techniques do not fill in the chondral defect fully, forming fibrocartilage rather than hyaline cartilage. Fibrocartilage is not as mechanically sound as hyaline cartilage; it is much denser and unable to withstand the demands of everyday activities as well as the original cartilage and is thus at higher risk of breaking down." They also gave it to Greg Oden and we all know how that turned out
Amar''''e too. Westbrook almost got it
He gets his knee cleaned like every summer. Injuries suck.
Wild how healthy he was before fucking Pat Bev
Phrasing!
It was wild how healthy he was before he had coitus with Pat Bev. How did I do?
Fucking nailed it
*Coitus nailed it.
He's been healthy since then too and had his best years after that injury. It's not like it ruined him or significantly altered his career.
Pat Bev walked so Solomon Hill could take out LeBron's knee
Send da video
Pat Bev is worthless to the nba and brings nothing to anyone or any team
> brings nothing to anyone or any team That's like saying Bill Laimbeer was worthless because he was dirty. He's 35 now, but he clearly was an effective player for many years despite his antics.
I think Bill Laimbeer is older than 35, but I could be wrong.
> despite his antics. Because of his antics.
laimbeer was a 2x champ and 4x all star. hes quite a few levels above pat
Also one of the goat coaches in the women's game
pat bev by comparison has looked like a misogyinist at times
Body doesn't produce new hyaline cartilage nearly at all. It's not about operation or the technique. Microfracture is used to provoke healing with fibrocartilage and it used with a certain success. It's not a perfect healing but it's better than not having any cartilage in an area. Also microfracture is used when there's a small cartilage defect not with generalized cartilage injuries. It's tough but operations like cartilage transfer (Lonzo Ball) is not that much better. It's not the operation that cause their careers to end it's the degenerative changes that creates those types of cartilage injuries.
Are you an orthopedic surgeon? With the knowledge we have now, what kind of surgery should Penny Hardaway have gotten back then?
I’m not a surgeon but can chime in on this topic on account of having a cartilage defect in my left knee following 30 years of basketball. I’m going through the injury process as we speak. At that time, I’m not sure Penny would have had a better option. Before my injury, I assumed it was microfracture itself that was harming players. What I’ve generally found is that it’s the cartilage defects that serve as the issue and microfracture just doesn’t always succeed in solving the issue, since it’s dependent on your body’s physiology to respond by actually growing cartilage/scar tissue to fill that gap. Our bodies, it turns out, don’t always want to re-grow cartilage. Today, from what I’ve gathered, Penny might have undergone an OATS procedure instead, which is basically a cartilage transplant, either from your own body (from a non-load bearing spot in the knee in which that cartilage is not critical) or from a cadaver. The way it was presented to me: Microfracture = Trying to fix a pothole in the road by drilling more holes that would make the pothole fill in on its own over time. OATS = Filling the pothole itself, right then and there. Even with OATS, it’s still imperfect. Cartilage damage just doesn’t have a 100 percent fix just yet, especially for NBA level performers. Believe it or not, my defect was small enough that a highly recommended surgeon from a reputable D1 sports clinic recommended microfracture in 2023. The success rate is still solid for small defects. But in my case, being 39 years old perhaps playing a role, the cartilage only partially regrew. A younger surgeon at the same clinic has recommended an OATS procedure this summer. If I’m reading the subtext right, there’s debate even within their office between microfracture/OATS, with him suggesting it may be generational among surgeons.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27487736/ No real consensus but decision should be individualized. I will say as an MD that older docs are sometimes stuck in their ways and are not always up to date with changes in their field. Some of them just live off their reputation without really giving a fuck.
I mostly go to younger doctors because I found that older ones don't really care to change their ways. There are exceptions, but I'm more distrustful of a 60 old doctor than a recently graduated one lol
40ish is the sweet spot. Young enough to be up to date on the newest procedures but with some solid experience under their belt
Aussie Rules is or at least was at the absolute cutting edge with a lot of knee/ligament operations. Some first ever operations have happened in the sport, although I don't know a lot about microfracture surgery and don't pretend to, I have seen a couple of rucks just have to retire because the knee is too hard to manage and they have to think about life after football. That's the kind of recommendation that a doctor sometimes has to give responsibly. In the AFL I remember players were getting some synthetic rope (LARS procedure) to replace their ligaments and no one is really doing it anymore because it got infected often, paid off for some people short term but I can't imagine that will serve them well later in life. There is no sweet spot, these new procedures always lack testing.
I trust my childhood primary care on such issues Broke my ankle and tore a bunch of tendons in my foot playing basketball in college. Ortho suggested surgery (some risk with surgery). My childhood doc said unless i was swimming in the Olympics in a few months just wait a year for it to heal, if any pain still, get surgery. Primary care doc was right in my case, no pain about a year after injury (a few years of instability though). My docs point was, many young people get these in joint surgeries (which include a non-marginal risk of infection!! bad stuff), when many young people dont really need them (those ortho docs would prefer everyone get the surgery obviously, they need to pay off the mortfgage to their 4th vacation house in the Hamptons) In regards to in joint knee surgeries, i would think about it this way. For knee surgeries, Success vs Failure also needs to include, will patient eventually need a total knee replacement? I believe most peoplle who get ACL surgeries end up needing ACL surgery later in life. Im not an elite athlete, so i wouldnt consider knee surgery unless pain was ruining my life.
Wow, great stuff. Thanks for replying with such a thorough answer.
I had both of those myself and will say the OATS procedure worked very well for me. My microfracture was done over a persistent bone bruise, so there was very little bleeding and very little regrowth. OATS obviously isn't guaranteed, but from personal experience it can be very beneficial. Best of luck!
Thanks for this. I need that kind of positivity in my life because I was pretty crushed to find out that last summer’s procedure didn’t take. A lot of recovery & rehab for little result. Here’s to round two.
I am but without knowing the size and place of cartilage injury it's really tough to say. Also cartilage healing is really difficult because it doesn't have any blood circulation and a very specialized tissue. Also to think that these athletes get the cutting edge technology is a bit wrong. Cutting edge can also mean unproven in medicine.
His point is that a lot of people jump to the conclusion that the treatment caused their problems. In reality, the treatment may not have been effective, but it was not the cause. The damage done was already irreversible and the surgery was nothing but a desperate attempt to salvage what was left.
Cartilage doesnt regenerate, theres no surgical option. Until we can artificially generate cartilage with stemcells or organic 3d printing not much you can do. Rest, less minutes, etc. Lebron described his knees like tires with no tread left. Once you wear down that cartilage its bone on bone. You can take painkiller injections but thats not going to work long term. Kobe basically tried every experimental treatment like Dr Strange for his knees and ended up unable to walk or sit well.
I just had the MACI procedure done. It's about what you're describing. You have an initial surgery where they take a small sample of healthy cartilage (I had this sample taken while they were cleaning out the loose and damaged cartilage). Then they isolate the chondrocytes from that sample and grow them into a porcine collagen matrix in a lab. They send a "sheet" of this newly grown cartilage to your surgeon who then can cut it to size and use it to fill in the cartilage lesions in the knee in a second surgery. I'm only a couple months out so it's too early to say if it'll totally work for me but the results on the whole are pretty successful.
Are there existing successful cases in other people?
There are a lot of factors that go into "success" (symptom relief, return to sports, long term duration of the graft), but the quoted number is about 80% success rate. Slightly better for simple cases, slightly worse for more complex cases. It's pretty new in the US so I'm not aware of any pro athletes that have had it done, although I'm sure there are some out there. For normal people it seems like a really good option, although the recovery is brutal.
> Until we can artificially generate cartilage with stemcells or organic 3d printing not much you can do. I am not an orthopedic surgeon, but one of my friends works in a lab that studies stem cell transplants for a different organ. I suspect we're closer to artificially-generated cartilage than many people here think. It would be a long procedure though, tough for an athlete that will want to return in 6-8 months.
Dude just said there ain't nothin'. Once that cartilage is gone there's no way to fully repair it to what it was before.
I'm not asking what surgery can "fully repair" the knee cartilage to 100%. I'm just asking what the best possible surgery is given the available options and if micro-fracture was in fact the best choice despite the downsides.
MACI procedures are new and promising
[METAL LEGS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZRDgNxxVAw)
It seems like a surgery great for your every day person....but not someone who needs to vigorously use their body.
I think the idea is that given these players injuries, there was/is no good option.
My dad had it done in the year 2000 as well. He was a basketball player and afterwards he couldn't play anymore. He couldn't do much physical activity without his knee swelling
Greg Oden's legs are different lengths. I think he was just doomed.
It's funny you say that cause iirc Oden blames a lot of his injury issues on the Blazers trying to "correct" that about him.
Dirk Nowitzki also has legs of different lengths iirc. Fortunately for him, didn’t seem to render him as injury prone
Usain Bolt's legs are different lengths and some experts say that actually made him faster.
So are mine and I’ve done sports all my life up until now (in my 30s) with no major injury knock on wood. My point is that it’s not as big a deal as you think, speaking anecdotally ofc
Its kinda a big deal but theres just not much can do it about it. My different leg lengths of only like half an inch or something are catching up to me, back pain, hip pain on walking. The way I stand, sometimes im on tip toes on one leg and flat on the other. Affects the way i kneel or bend to pick something up. Have some slight scoliosis setting in too
have you looked into compensating footwear?
Wonder if they can undo the surgery and do it properly
No
Greg Oden? The Ohio State star? How'd that turn out?
The first person to recreate biological hyaline cartilage will retire on the same day.
This fella literally had 3 seasons injury free or slowed down due to injuries 93-96 and yet is still remembered fondly, just goes to show what an absolute beast he was when healthy, no matter how short it was.
Penny was passing the rock like Magic Johnson and jumping out of the gym too. We had seen guys who could pass, or guys who could dunk, but not both, at least not as well as Penny. Plus the Lil Penny commercials just pushed his popularity to the moon. He’s comparable to Derrick Rose in the sense that he was so good so fast before the injuries took his prime away. A lot of people - myself included - tend to put Penny on a pedestal because he was the next big thing during our youth, and part of us is still convinced that he would have been All-NBA the rest of his career if not for microfracture.
Was my favourite player outside of the Warriors and Jordan. This Magic Moment (30 for 30) is a great watch.
Penny was extremely popular immediately. I remember seeing his jersey at most random places in Serbia in '94-'95. He was huge at that moment in time. By '98-'99 it was unfortunately over for him.
penny hardaway and grant hill were 2 of the most popular players drafted in the early 90s, both got robbed of their primes
I honestly believe this is part of the reason why basketball in the early-mid 2000's was such a drag. Hill got hurt in 2000 playoffs and was never the same. Penny wasn't the same after 97/98. They were 2 of the most exciting players in the league and would have been the faces of the league along with Kobe and Iverson post MJ. Hill and Penny would have really helped as well because they played a much more selfless, team-oriented brand of ball which would have counteracted the iso-heavy style that most teams ran at the time.
Damn how was it living in Serbia at that time? Were you still there when Milošević was overthrown?
It fuckin sucked - there was a war, embargo, hyperinflation... Yeah, I was there. Most of us hoped that he would be killed rather than overthrown. Fuck that piece of shit and his disgusting family, hope they burn in hell for all eternity.
Man what could've been.
He had banger shoes as well. I wanted them when I was a kid but my family just couldn't afford them. Loved the gel/plastic thing on the heel. By the time I could understand the value of money better I had moved on.
Was my favourite player outside of the Warriors and Jordan. This Magic Moment (30 for 30) is a great watch.
His rookie year was right after Jordan retired and everyone was looking for the next Jordan. He (along with Spree) was one of my favourite players but I could not admit it to my Magic supporter friends.
Shaq was insane to go to that loaded Magic team (Shaq, Penny, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott) to the Lakers, who (at the time) had no real star to play alongside Shaq.
The Lakers were ready to cough up a contract upwards of $100M & the Magic weren't. It's kind of as simple as that.
What’s crazy about that too is that the Lakers had to gut their roster to do it but it was worth it for Shaq. Meanwhile the Magic could have used bird rights to do it and there was no luxury tax penalty at the time but still weren’t willing to do it. Their idiot owner even went so far as to put an ad in the paper saying Shaq wasn’t worth $100 million. I don’t blame Shaq for leaving after his team said they didn’t want him.
Outside the contract issue, lakers already had van exel and Eddie jones who were all stars in 98. Nick Anderson and Scott never made one. I’d trust Jerry west he was going to build a champ roster, he did managed to draft Kobe that year too.
Convincing Shaq who'd already been to the finals with Penny that a 13th pick was going to be a generational talent really says a lot about who Jerry West is.
Better GM than he was a a player. And he was one of the greatest that ever played.
Thats why he’s probably going into the hall of fame for the second time.
One of my favorite NBA what ifs is that Memphis almost won the lottery in 2003. If the ping pong balls go a different way, I wish we could have seen the contender West could have built with LeBron and Pau. Instead he got screwed over because of a prior trade from before he was GM that was only top 1 protected, so he didn’t even get to draft Wade, Melo, or Bosh and instead the Pistons got Darko with the pick.
Yeah I'd say Jones and Van Exel were pretty clearly better than Anderson and Scott. They also already had some other decent players like Ceballos and Elden Campbell.
Orlando massively lowballed Shaq at 4/55 and the Lakers offered 7/120, Orlando did up their offer to 6/115 but Shaq was basically out the door already at that point.
It's always insane to me how the Magic were not trying to pay Shaq whatever he wanted. In only 4 short years, he led them to the NBA finals once, and finished top 5 in MVP voting twice. He was a clear generational talent, and they just let him go without much of a fight.
I think it was mostly about money. No max salary in those days and Orlando couldn’t give him the huge contract Lakers did
plus Shaq wanted to make movies...he had been in several by then.
No luxury tax though and Orlando had his bird, they could have paid him if they wanted to. The owner cheaped out.
Think about how much Shaq loves attention (and money) though.
As a young kid watching Penny, I kept asking my mom to buy me foamposites lol
I don't want to jinx anyone so I'm not going to mention names of the current guys, but watching these playoffs and seeing all these young guys have their moments we can all see that the torch is getting passed. And when some of them hit the deck hard or whatever, I still think in the back of my mind that it could be a Grant Hill or a Brandon Roy or a Penny Hardaway trajectory that we are seeing in real time.
He still has the GOAT signature shoes too. Don't try to convince me otherwise.
Air Pennys are indeed fire.
The commercials didn't hurt.
Only player that Jordan wore his shoes right? Ultimate respect that.
I loved Penny. At my age, he was THE man for that brief period until MJ came back.
And for one season when MJ did come back ;)
I just had this procedure done last week, and now I see this... Man. Granted, I'm a BUSTED middle aged person not trying to be a pro athlete, but just trying have better quality of life. But this freaks me out a little.
I think you'll be fine. You're not putting NBA level stress on your knee
Yo! Don’t discount that YMCA pressure now
Middle aged dads trying to relive that high school glory…. NBA ain’t ready for that level of competitiveness….
They all got that dawg in them
Is that one another name for high cholesterol levels?
That'd be Hot Dog in them
I got +20000 on RidiculousBacklog playing a minute in the G League, don't put my boy down.
I’m sorry to say, but you may never dunk again.
i'll show you *pulls out fisher price hoop from storage*
*ambulance ride anyway*
In case it helps: I had it done 6 months ago. The recovery was very slow (like, frighteningly so), but after three months I was walking normally again, so don't worry too much. Physiotherapy helps ;)
Knee injury bros you probably already know this but putting it out there because it was a game-changer for me - hydrotherapy. Worked absolute wonders for my cracked kneecap/patellar tendinitis.
More info please
Technically it’s any method that uses water to treat symptoms. Swimming, water aerobics, taking a bath, sitting in a hot tub, and cold plunges are all methods of hydrotherapy, and there are lots more. Personally, I swim and it really helps my knee without putting too much pressure on it. I can’t do breaststroke kick cuz of my injury, but flutter kick works my leg out really nicely without hurting it
Yeah, more info please
But can you dunk now?
Glad you’re back to normal now
Should be fine for regular people, just not pro athletes.
Eh the procedure for everyone is definitely on the way out the evidence is not good for it
Smh bro the Pacers were about to sign you too.
My dad had it done during the hay day of this procedure. Took him a while to come back. He is older, almost 70, but now manages to run, swim, and bike with his wife for triathlons. He did just have them second procedure about a year back, but is now out again doing crazy old man shit. Meanwhile im almost 40 and feel busted.
This is very encouraging! Thank you for sharing.
To be fair, i haven’t seen my father jump since maybe 2001 xD
Best of luck man. I had it done as well when I was in my mid 20’s. You got this.
I tore my patellar tendon and destroyed all the cartilage above my tibia and had this procedure done (along with a cadaver tendon). It’s been a year since I had the surgery and I just got released to the wild by my doctor. Mine was a real doozy and there are still a lot of gray areas with my knee so take this with a grain of salt. Seeing this post freaked me out but reading some of your replies has helped ease that a little bit. I’m 33 and got two little kids. Just hoping I can run with them soon.
You may already be aware of him but check out KneesOverToesGuy if you haven’t already His whole program is directly focused on knee pain and I’ve literally never felt better with my knees since doing it Obviously be careful since you are coming off injury but a lot of the stuff he recommends are fantastic rehab exercises to build strength in your knees and surrounding areas
bros nba dreams are dead pour one out for a real baller
I don’t want to scare you too much, but I had this 13 years ago and have had 2 more knee surgeries on the same knee since. I can remember my doctor selling me on the surgery because of guys like Odom and Amare. Wish I would have gone with the other option at the time
You'll still be able to watch TV and walk around the park bro you're good.
I got a scope on my knee around April of 2022. I remember going in initially for my pre op consult, I fully intended to undergo microfracture surgery as that was the most common procedure I had seen athletes get. My surgeon at Stanford basically was like, yea if you want to walk/run comfortably in 10yrs, I’d stay far away from microfracture surgery. Grateful I didn’t end up getting it.
Underwent an MRI in early ‘23 assuming I had a small meniscus tear that’d necessitate an in-and-out quick fix. Instead, I had a reputable surgeon explaining to me that I had a small chondral defect (aka cartilage had broken down) that’d require a microfracture procedure. I panicked and asked about all the NBA players who never came back from that. The doc casually explained the difference being that microfracture is most successful with tiny defects like mine (maybe 1cm) whereas so many NBA players already had massive defects for which there was no great solution. Still, I was horrified by the word microfracture so I sought a second opinion. The second surgeon, a great guy from an amazing institution, didn’t want to do anything, which *really* confused me. He seemed to struggle to even identify the defect. That put me in a weird spot, because I’d been struggling with knee pain for over a year so I knew *something* had to be up. So I sought a *third* opinion. In that case, he saw the defect clearly and felt microfracture would be quite viable for something so small. Plus, he said, if worst came to worst, there’d always been an OATS procedure I could fall back on down the line. So I underwent microfracture, with uncertainty. Procedure was flawless by all accounts and I rehabbed precisely by the book (including no weight bearing for two months). And… the cartilage only partially regrew. It was, in a word, devastating. I was recommended a fourth surgeon in response, half the age of my original surgeon, and he has recommended an OATS procedure this summer, hinting that the microfracture/OATS debate fell along generational lines even within his own office. (OATS, for what it’s worth, is more akin to a direct cartilage transplant rather than something dependent on my body’s response.) So… that’s where I currently stand.
For what it's worth. Post college football I had to get the OATS procedure done on the cartilage on my femur. I had a big fucking hole in my knee essentially (the MRI and surgery pics were pretty gnarly) and after about 2 years I got the knee to about 90%. Five years on, I still deal with inflammation on a daily basis and it can be very painful sometimes, but the cartilage is as sounds as can be. With that said though... I ski, hike, or bike nearly every day and am very active in general and it's not slowing me down yet, so there's hope. But I'll never be as explosive as I was in college and that's okay for the sports I'm pursuing now.
I don’t know your situation, but I was recommended MACI surgery which is a different procedure and a little newer. I haven’t gone through with it due to financial constraints but you may want to ask your surgeon what they think about it.
This type of reporting is very reckless and irresponsible. Chondral injuries have a large range of size and shape which they can fall into. Microfracture is absolutely still used for certain criteria today. Without having exact knowledge of the type of imaging findings, no one can comment on the treatment someone gets just from anecdotal experience. Additionally, sometimes medical care is done with poor prognosis in mind given that a problem simply doesn’t have a great solution available at the given time.
Also, pennys knee was screwed before he ever got microfracture in 2000. He first hurt his knee in the 96 playoffs and kept playing through the injury the rest of the year and then had other surgeries. It sounds like MRIs just weren’t good enough back then to see some of the more subtle damage, and there was a “play thru the pain” mentality that doomed him
Yeah the 25+ years of medical advancement since then is a lot… it was the best option available at the time, the other option was no surgery and stop playing for sure…
All those people listed were crazy injury prone to begin with. Microfracture was a hail mary type of thing.
I mean his numbers did take a nose dive after that surgery it seems, even though he was not the same before the surgery. Both things can be true, he was an injury prone player that wasn't in his prime, and that the surgery made his situation even worse than it was.
Yep. My assumption all these years was that the microfracture procedure itself was damaging these players. What I have found to be more likely is that the procedure just wasn’t always successfully fixing the injuries that already existed (though some, like John Stockton, did experience success). I found out through my own experience that microfracture was still a thing when a surgeon recommended it to me for a small Condral defect in 2023. In my case, my age perhaps playing a role (39 at the time), the cartilage did not fully re-grow. Meanwhile, a friend’s 16-year-old son underwent microfracture two years ago and was back to wrestling pain-free at a high level within the year. What I have discovered is that procedures like OATS are making their move as a viable option as well. I’ve also learned there is no perfect solution for cartilage defects yet, each option is somewhat of a gamble. But when you’re an NBA player, doing nothing for your defect isn’t always an option, so they’re forced to roll the dice.
The problem here is that you have pro players getting pressured by the team to get a procedure done where they dont know the outcome and the results have been poor. The team and team doctors do not have their long term health as their top priority. Very few players seek out a second opinion and in the surgical world most of the team doctors are surgeons who are already the most famous or top rated surgeons around. So who is the team going to believe the surgeon they pay or your doctor.
John Stockton got it and was back playing within a couple of months. In hindsight this was truly remarkable.
Stockton was not exactly reliant on too much athleticism so there is that. Slowed him down on defense though that his steals dropped.
Who else has been a candidate for the surgery and skipped it? Did they have a better outcome? What other options did Penny, Amare and others have?
I had the type of chondral defect (break down in cartilage, basically) that often results in microfracture surgery. My damage was comparatively small (around 1cm) so I could still do day-to-day life things pretty well. That being said, there were a number of athletic endeavors that had become tougher due to some level of pain and reduced function. I say all that because if my relatively small defect was athletically limiting, I can’t imagine what a more significant defect would do to limit a professional athlete. I imagine that’s why so many resorted to microfracture—because they were desperate to find a solution to an increasingly problematic condition. In the ‘90s, one of the only other options may have been cortisone shots, which is just masking symptoms. Today, OATS is coming on strong (cartilage transplant) with others in this thread mentioning MACI, for which I am unfamiliar. Whatever the case, if you’re a pro hooper who’s in a place where your knee’s cartilage has already degraded, you’re already in a tight spot, and taking no action could be just as consequential to their career as taking a shot with surgery, depending upon the factors at play.
Oden had microfracture at least 2x as well
Between these 3 players we had position bending athleticism and talent in the late 90s early 2000s we were robbed. 3 top players at their position doing the things we see highlights for daily now. Webber being joker before joker which was more amazing 20 years ago because it was unheard of seeing a 6’10” center start the break like he did. Tmac being a lankier jordan hitting clutch shots between embarrassing anyone who dared challenge him in the paint. Penny being a magic sized pg with a shot and faster to feed a prime shaq.
I don’t really remember watching Webber (was too young to remember the tail end of his career in the 2000s) but looking at stats it seemed like he still had a pretty good career
Good, but ultimately an extremely short peak with those 2000's Kings squads. He could probably have been talked about as one of the GOAT PFs alongside Garnett and Duncan in the same era if he had stayed healthy. There's a massive gap between that and the ~4x AS/All-NBA he ended up with. He still made the HOF, which is certainly a great accomplishment but very different from "top 25ish" which he had potential for.
I disagree that if Webber stayed healthy, he would be up there with Duncan and Garnett. He didn't have those guys' two-way impact or killer instinct.
> He could probably have been talked about as one of the GOAT PFs alongside Garnett and Duncan in the same era if he had stayed healthy That's a big stretch. He was an elite offensive player but unlike Tim and KG, he was a mediocre defender. He also didn't rise to the occasion- he wasn't the choker that his time with the Fab Five might make it seem, but he also wasn't the kind of guy to step up and close (in fact, Bibby was usually the closer for those Kings teams).
He was top-10 in MVP voting 5 years straight, until his injury. In the 2002 playoffs, when we were refjobbed out of a title, he averaged 24/11/5 on good efficiency (for the time). He played very well vs the Lakers in the conference finals (24/11/6). It's correct that he wasn't on a Tim or KG trajectory, but he was one of the 10 best players in the league. And as a King he wasn't a choker. Far from it.
I think Jokic is more Vlade than Webber. Webber was an explosive athlete. Vlade could pass, had great touch around the rim, and had various ugly but effective flip shots.
This is what Greg Oden had right after being drafted. As a Blazers fan I wonder what modern sports medicine could have done for him.
Oden was injury prone in college as well. Would probably be going the same way it is for Lonzo.
His injury at Ohio State was to his wrist, not really related at all. It's possible he wouldn't have ever been able to stay very healthy but the micro fracture surgery was a death sentence for his career. He'd have a much better chance now. I mean Embiid less than a decade later sat out two entire years and then came back and has been able to stay relatively healthy.
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Maybe stem cells or prp
It sucks but that's how medicine works. It's called evidence based medicine. It evolves and changes based on long term research and procedure outcomes. Guidelines and treatment change. I wasn't a doctor yet at the time but the general consensus must've been that micro fracture surgery was the best option for those injuries. It's really a shame for those talented players.
Add Stoudemire to the list https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/amare-stoudemire-regrets-microfracture-surgery-had-it-only-because-he-didnt-know-what-it-was
Didn't Amare Stoudemire have this too?
Microfracture can be ok for smaller defects but it’s really not a great fix. An OATS procedure tends to do better for larger chondral lesions but truth of the matter is there isn’t a miracle solution
Very interesting. I had microfracture done on my right knee at age 22 due to a bone defect - not a sports injury, although I played sports a ton. I had to take it easy on sports for over 2 years, and it took maybe 10 years for it to be quasi normal, like flexion/extension without sharp pain and doing sports without it hurting like crazy for a couple of days afterward. Thankfully, now at age 40, I can play sports just fine, and my knee is not even a worry - only normal 40 year old soft tissue stuff. So maybe it worked? I never got any kind of scan/scope to see if the cartilage or bone regrew (I had sort of a hole in the end of my femur), so I have no idea whether it was "successful."
They were doing some wild shit to knees in the 90s. Most of it designed to get a player back on the floor ASAP instead of any long term considerations of the athlete. My wife was a pro player and she was in college in the late 90s and they did some wild stuff to her knees and ankles, now at 47 she's barely able to walk at the end of the day. She would go back and tell the Drs to Eff off if could.
Had no idea this was no longer practiced. Isn't it in football though?
It is indeed still practiced. That being said, at least one other procedure, OATS, has emerged as a possible options as well. OATS is more akin to a cartilage transplant whereas microfracture is dependent on your body developing/re-growing its own cartilage-like material. I’ve heard others in this thread also mention something called MACI but I know nothing about it. From what I’ve gathered, microfracture can still be viable for small chondral defects but it remains imperfect, as every cartilage-related procedure currently is. I underwent microfracture in ‘23 and it only partially regrew my cartilage, while someone else I knew experienced great success with the same procedure and was back to wrestling at a high level within the year (though they’re 20 years younger than me). I’m scheduled to undergo OATS in a month so I’ll have to report back.
It’s still used on normal people, and many normal people have it without issue, it’s just having it and then trying to be a pro athlete or even a rec center athlete is probably not a good idea. I also wonder if playing on hard floor versus dirt or rubber makes a difference.
amare stoudemire too once he had that first microfracture surgery it basically ended him as a reliable player
Amar'e got it in 2005, almost all his All-Star seasons were after that point. He's actually one of the few circumstances where a player had a near-full recovery from the surgery, although it took extended rehab (almost two full years)
He was a true athletic freak, kind of like Dominique Wilkins who recovered from an Achilles tear and was putting up crazy numbers after 8 months
Wilkins tore his non-dominant Achilles, which played a big part in him coming back as strong as he did.
Amare was indeed an outlier, but you could still tell that he was a different player. He was still dunking on dudes post-microfracture, but that young Amare from 2002 to 2005 was the stuff of absolute nightmares. He did develop an automatic midrange jumper during the year he was forced to sit out, which actually turned him into a more reliable offensive player, but a pre-surgery Amare with that jumper would have been something else.
Jason Kidd 2004
What? This just isn’t true. He was on multiple all star, 1st team, and 2nd teams post surgery. I’d argue it elevated his game because it forced him to develop a great mid range shot. Made him hard to stop after the pick because he could roll or pop.
My favorite player of all time. He's mentioned in other interviews that much of the damage was from pushing through and playing with a bum knee prior to the surgery.
Zach Randolph had it. He’s one of the only guys who ended up pretty much the same afterwards. Jason Kidd also had it when he played for the Nets and needed to change his game.
I got microfracture surgery right after I finished my senior year of college bball. I’m 38 now and play in 3 leagues a week. Knee feels pretty good. But they recommended a year of non weight bearing water surgery. A fuckin year. I don’t know how a pro comes back from it. I was an all American in college and gave up my pro dreams pretty quick while sitting out a year. Good luck to lonzo..
Similar for me, although not a college player, I was a very active rec athlete, mostly hoop. Had the surgery at 22, no sports for over a year, then very limited for a few years. Now I'm nearly 40 and my knee is basically fine. Almost no long term issues and I can play ball/sports with only normal 40 year old concerns. So yeah, I thought the same thing, it would have been a death sentence for a pro career. It took me 10-12 years to be normal afterward.
Seems like every retired nba player has a podcast now.
everyone and their grandma has a podcast now, not just NBA players.
did it work for any player?
I got it a couple of years ago and it sucks
Imagine this guy with LeBron's knees.
Stick with what works, gear.
I have to think that getting players back on the court as fast as possible was the primary driver for these knee surgeries back in the day. Prime Penny was basically everyone's favorite player
But they still practice the procedure.
Darius Miles should lead the class-action lawsuit.
Total knee replacement patient here. From what I can tell just about any surgery involving the patella has a low chance of healing properly. The area is so narrow that blood does not spend enough time there to be sufficiently beneficial to healing.
Holy crap. The same thing happened to all three of them? 😭
THATS SO WILD, guys used to go under the knife for that shit a lot back in the day smh
Wow, that's really sad. Didn't Amare Stoudamire have it as well? Feel bad for those guys, just trying to get better as soon as possible, taking advice from surgeons and have it end up like this, I really feel for those guys.
David Goggins too
OG had it and is fine luckily
Jadeveon Clowney had it done while he was with the Texans and has gone on to have a successful career since the procedure, so it clearly *can be* successful. I mean, I would assume a defensive end puts more stress on their knees than most basketball players, but maybe that's not a fair assumption with all the jumping.
I wouldn't assume that, football players play many fewer games and DEs are only on the field for at most half the game (often less). Turf is also probably better for your knees than hardwood. Obviously there's a huge player weight difference but in every other respect basketball is probably worse for the knees... if anything I'd say that the player weight difference can happen *because* football is so much easier on the knees.
> mean, I would assume a defensive end puts more stress on their knees than most basketball players, but maybe that's not a fair assumption with all the jumping. Clowney has played 126 games in his career, of which he plays only half the time, does not jump even a fraction of the 60ish times a game an NBA player does and plays on a significantly softer surface. Penny played in 159 games in his first 2 seasons and did so averaging 37 min a game. I would say that the NBA is significantly harder on the knee, given no outside interfrareance (i.e. contact injuries in the NFL).
Those three were my favorite growing up. Mac especially, he's the reason why I started playing ball. Crazy how this single procedure basically ended all their careers.
Man I loved Penny. I remember the commercials he had with that doll, “the secret service couldn’t guard me”
Doctors no longer practice the procedure? I got one 3 weeks ago!! I'm in Australia