Shane Battier PEAK Blog Sept. 26, 2008 I have some unfortunate news to break to all of you. I have a deep bone bruise in my ankle and will have to miss the next four weeks to rest my foot. That means that I will miss the start of training camp and all of the preseason games. The doctors are optimistic that I'll be able to fully recover for the season and that I should be able to control the pain for the remainder of the year. As many of you know, I had surgery at the end of this past season to remove bone spurs that were growing on my foot. Bone spurs are very common on the feet and knees of basketball players. We develop them because all of the pounding that our joints receive during our season. When I started to rehabilitate my ankle, the way that I walked, ran and jumped was slightly altered. During one rehabilitation session, I believe that I tried to jump too quickly and forcefully and jarred the bones in the back of my ankle. This trauma caused the area to slightly swell. There is not a lot of room for swelling in the foot joint, so when there is swelling in the foot joint, it becomes very painful and sore. The best medicine to treat this type of injury is rest. The doctors told me to reduce the amount of impact and force that I apply to the joint to allow the joint to return to normal. That means no training camp or preseason for me this year. I am extremely disappointed at this news because I worked very hard to prepare myself for the season. I like to use the preseason to improve my conditioning and prepare my body for the pounding that it takes during the season. I remain optimistic and positive that the combination of rest and strengthening exercises will improve my foot to the point where I can play effectively this season. There is no need to worry about me, I am keeping a positive attitude and I know I will be on the court soon! I will talk to you soon, Your friend, Shane ===================================== Link: http://blog.sina.com.cn/battier
sweet, once he is back he won't have to always guard the opposing best player and with the depth at the 3 and 4 he won't take as much pounding this yr if adelman does it right.
He's the Rocket's Craig Biggio as far as community good guy. So Artest WILL start, and depending on how the Rockets are doing when Shane comes back, it will prolly be that way because chemistry has been already built with Artest starting. But everything is changeable and I bet Adelman wants some scoring punch off the bench.
Battier is a great guy to have place with Yao and Tmac at the same time. He is a more reliable 3-point shooter, so when double and triple teams hit Yao and Tmac, it's good to have him out there. Brooks (or put Barry here and either Head or Harris at guard/Forward spot) Barry Artest Landry Dorsey I like that half of that second line-up are scrappy hustle guys and then the other half are three-point shooters/distributors. Artest evens them out with being able to get his own shot.
I feel for you, Batman. Unfortunately, if you miss training camp and pre-season, then it's going to take a while for you to get back up to speed after you come back and trying to do it in the regular season. I trust you will do your best to get back and help us win the championship.
I can handle Artest in the starters roll and from what I saw in summer league and the handful of games last year, Mike Harris could be a very servicable backup 3 (outside of Tmac and Barry). Also, I believe that Landry was working on his shot and there was a bit of talk about him having some playing time at the 3. Bottom line, I believe we're set at the SF.
Me neither, but you know Battier is going to play well if he can move at all. Remember how badly he was limping around in the playoffs? Most guys would have been in the locker room.
This blog makes it sound worse than I initially thought. The news before was that it was just some inflammation and the rest was for "precautionary reasons". This actually sounds rather serious, considering that there is apparently uncertainty whether it will be an issue the rest of the season.
Exactly. In fact, I figured it was something that he might normally just play through, but since it's preseason he was going to take it easy. Now it seems more like something that he can't afford to play on at all, and can only hope that it heals on its own in a timely manner. At this point, I'm not even counting on him being there for the opener, especially since we have Artest now and there shouldn't be a dire need for him to rush back.
