With the unfortunate news this morning that Steph Curry has a foot ligament sprain following a collision with Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart in Wednesday night's game, the Warriors will now seek more opinions to determine the severity of the injury.
With so much left to be determined, Dr. Nirav Pandya of UCSF and Benioff Children's Hospital joined the Dubs Talk podcast to give his insight and thoughts on the possibilities.
Here's what Dr. Pandya said about the severity of Curry's injuries and the prognosis for a return:
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"When the injury first occurred, when an athlete goes down like that, you first want to make sure nothing is broken, which would definitely be a season-ending, Curry is down for the playoffs, three-to-six months. So the fact that X-rays showed that nothing is fractured, number one that is great news.
"Then you are looking at the MRI. The goal of the MRI is to look for a couple of things. One, could there be some kind of hairline fracture that the X-rays did not show, which could mean he could be back for part of the playoffs, but luckily it sounds like the MRI did not show that. Then you are looking to see what kind of soft tissues are damaged. Is it a ligament, is it tendons or is it just bruising? Based on the report it sounds like it was a ligament.
"Now, there are so many different ligaments in the foot, so determining when he can come back is really determined by, number one, how bad is it? So we know that a sprain is some degree of tearing. So it can be microscopic tearing, partial tearing, full tearing. So that is number one, and we do not really know that. Number two, it is which ligament that is. And the main ligament that we would be concerned about as the bad ligament, is the Lisfranc ligament. And that is why you hear a lot with NFL players is that 'so and so got Lisfranc surgery.'
"The fact that you are hearing reports that he can be back for the playoffs, that there was not immediate surgery, my gut feeling of something like that goes down, especially with the Adrian Wojnarowski tweet that he may be back for the beginning of the playoffs.
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"But when they talk about 'indefinitely', there is so much nuance in terms of dealing with sprains of the foot. From the report, it sounds like they will see Dr. Ferkel, who is the same person who took care of Curry's ankles back when he was going through that procedure to clean up things. So they are probably trying to figure out if they are certain that he does not need surgery, and it sounds like based on the reports that he probably won't need it. It really is determining how aggressive they can be in getting him back, and what that timeline is."
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Other notable takeaways from Dr. Pandya:
- Any type of surgery means that Curry is out for the playoffs.
- "Shortest timeframe, if it is a garden variety type of sprain, it can be quick as seven-to-ten days. Not much swelling, and they will be extra cautious because it is Steph Curry, and want to make sure everything is right."
- "If there is a little more inflammation, and they don't want this to creep back up, then you are kind of looking at three-to-four weeks, which is my guess of where we will be."
- Will this linger? "Once these heal, if it is not one of the important ligaments... Once it is healed, absolutely not, you are fine."
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