There was some interesting and unsettling revelations in the latest update on Mike Dunleavy's knee injury. The injury is due to a "giant bone spur on my right patella tendon." According to Dun, the knee has been an issue for some time.
"This is an issue I've had for about 10 years," Dunleavy said in his first public comments about the severity of his knee trouble. "This isn't new. It isn't a matter of knowing what it is."It's a matter of figuring out how you fix it. That's kind of what we're working with right now."
"Probably not until I got in the NBA was it recognized as something more than tendinitis," said Dunleavy, the No. 3 pick in the 2002 draft out of Duke. "Early on, it was 'Oh, you have tendinitis. Everybody goes through it. You're young, whatever.'
"Over the course of the years, it's just gotten worse. Last year, I took a pretty bad fall and from that standpoint, I haven't been the same since. That's why were trying to figure something out."
So if the knee has been getting progressively worse over the last ten years, don't you have it cut that bone spur out to stop the pain progression? I realize cutting on an athlete's knee is a last ditch effort, but it seems like the situation has reached that point. If he stays status quo, it seems to me, he'll always be battling the pain. But there must be some uncertainty with the surgery, considering he's seen several specialist and they aren't ordering up surgery as the cut and dried solution. Maybe they were trying to exhaust all of their efforts to get Dun back on the court to finish out the season before having surgery. Now that he's done for the year, surgery may make more sense.