Was Yao's Injury a Fluke?

I watched the video quite a few times and it just doesn't seem like anything happened there other than him landing on his foot a bit off-centered. Nothing more.

 

i dont think we have enough info for me to disagree that it's a freak injury, but i think you missed what i said about his strain being in the back of the foot. I guess it's not impossible for the malleolus to crack if the foot is forced in either direction, but in this case the strain was reported in the rear, which tells me his foot got dorsiflexed, not plantar flexed.

The difference to me is that it means Mcgee didnt cause the injury directly and it was due to Yao landing awkwardly.

 

Interesting theory. I wish I knew enough to say whether it's valid or not. Wasn't there a orthopedist or a podiatrist on CF who commented in a recent Yao injury thread? Maybe he'll offer an opinion.

I'm still concerned about that tidbit of info on Yao's specific type of injury that says it's often cause by a recent change in a workout routine.

 

Dude take it easy. What's up with name calling? Do you think when Yao accidentally broke Ben Wallace's shin bone that he deserves to be called such names. I know this is the Rockets and you and other psychopaths (I do commend you for the analysis) live and die by this team but to call people such names for an accident provoking needless hate in the wrong connotation. I am a reasonable Yao fan myself, I bet some of Yao's worst haters on these boards are actually Yao Lovers to the extreme. They may say trade the b*stard and what not but when push comes to shove they get all upturned if Yao's time here is absolutely over.. It's twisted but very common mental state among he most devoted fans.

 

But Mcghee did not land on his foot. Looks like he missed it, as his foot plants cleaning and stably onto the ground. If he lands on any part of Yao's foot, you'd see his ankle roll. It does not. Means he landed flat footed with nothing underneath.

Also, there is no "flex" on Yao's ankle. He lands cleanly on the foot. And is falling back from the contact. He is dropping but his leg is not straight, his knee is bending. That means his foot and ankle are still in a standing alignment - no flexion. Once Yao gets low enough, his foot pops into the air just like anyone else who falls without flexing their ankle. In other words, the injury had to have occured on impact with his foot to the ground - which was not that much.

This injury is not from trauma but from the repeated landing on his foot. In otherwords, it's an over use injury. The impact he had on the ground was merely the straw the broke the camels back. It was always there waiting to finally crack or whatever.

This was not a freak injury. If it did not happen on that play, it would have happened on one of the next 20 for sure.

Either Yao's body simply can not take the stress of playing basketball regularly, or this was an injury from years ago that has not been addressed and was missed.

Either way, it's a bad sign and it's not a freak injury.

 

I'm a bigger than normal athlete. I know stretching like a ballerina or gymnast is not most fundamental thing with most guys. If Yao were to be injured that way would be the shin and ankle muscle would snap not the bone. As fragile as Yao is his bones are much stronger than most humans in this world simply because of how much of an athlete he is as an NBA player. Let's get back to the stretching, do you remember in gym class or basketball practice where you do that shin splint stretch. When you manipulate this type of stretching of different angles (if you are even flexible enough which most ballers are) you can see that the range of bend of the foot away from the shin is almost infinite. At worst Yao would suffer from torn ankle and shin ligaments (muscles not bone). The fracture would still be caused by vertical weight down pounding. So no the McGee contact did not cause the fracture.

 

My mistake, for some reason i had "lateral malleolus" in my head, but it's the medial malleolus, so here's the correct picture...hopefully this shows better how it can be crushed if it's dorsiflexed.



as you can see here, if the arch is lowered it makes it easier to dorsiflex the foot and crush the part of the malleolus, which is probably why they say it's related.



i havent watched the whole press conference, so maybe i can pick up something else from it later..

 

That i can say is definitely not true...while i dont agree it flexed the way OMR is suggesting, yao's ankle clearly dorsiflexes at the 46 second mark. you can see it sort of buckle as his foot impacts the floor, which tells me he landed mostly on his toes or front part of his foot. If you land that way and keep driving the foot down without planting the heel of it, the ankle will close too much. He doesn't land cleanly at all. Watch his heel, it's still up in the air as he lands and never hits the ground.

 

The abbreviation of pounds is lbs, not pds.

 

You realize the 24 min is not a management decision and is a doctor decision right?

 

Stress fractures are called stress fractures for a reason. Even if McGee landed on that part of his leg/foot, there would be torn ligaments but the fracture itself occurred due to Yao frailty.

 

Watch his heel...it never lands on the floor. If his heel never lands it can't get the leverage needed to "kick" Mcgee's foot back up. Also, if the stretch happened in the front like you said and was severe enough to cause a fracture it would have likely stretched something int he front as well, but IIRC it was all in the back.


Imagine running up some stairs and landing on a stair with just your toe or front of the foot, without the heel planting. Normally, you can do this with a light foot and being aware ahead of time that you're doing it, so that you can shift your weight accordingly. However, if it happens because you missed a step or didnt reach it, somethign unexpected like Yao's fall, then your weight comes down pretty hard on it and forces the foot to dorsiflex too much. That's what happened to yao.



another example is doing a calf raise like this. Normally you control the weight up and down and keep your foot from dorsiflexing too much on the way down, but what would happen if on the way down you let the weight just come straight down? you'd end up going too far down in this part of the movement:



which would over stretch the rear of the ankle and crush the front of it, which is what yao's ankle did ont he way down, planting on the front of the foot, not the heel.

 

I can't see how both things happened, they're opposite actions. you're suggesting he over extended it like this (ignore drawn marks):



but yao's foot never reached the full rang of motion in that direction. His ankle was like this on impact with floor:



It clearly locked this way as far as it possibly could in this direction at 46 seconds. The only difference is yao's heel is up in the air so the whole foot is facing down rather than straight ahead like in this picture. There's no way he went from that end of the spectrum all the way to the other (the first pic) in that motion. He did start to go in that direction, but his foot came up before it went that far, so i can't see how it would snap anything. Something solid like a tree tunk with no give could probably snap without going the whole way, but not an ankle joint because it's like a hinge. It pretty much has to lock first in one direction befor it "snaps" and in yao's case it only locked in the forward direction.

 

That's not the same as yao's situation. Your natural instinct kicks in because you know what youre doing. You know you're going to fall back and you're mind knows to tell your body to roll back on the heel to prevent you from falling. In yao's case it was unexpected. Yao can't prepare himself for the collision with Mcgee. That's how accidents happen, from unexpected forces coming into the picture and/or from the body miscalculating something. How often do you see players jump straight up, with no one around, on a routine rebound, and then come down to sprain their ankle? It just doesn't happen because the player has done it so many times their body knows how to land properly in that scenario. On the other hand, if they get pushed or bumped, their body can't always react properly because there's so many different variations possible that you can't practice for. You can get pushed very hard, lightly, from behind, from in front, from the top, etc...you can't possibly prepare for all of that. Although sometimes you may be able to manage and avoid injury, other times your body wont be able to respond quickly enough or correctly and it'll result in injury. If you really want to mimic this, then jump in the air and have someone jump into you before you land Of course i dont expect you to do it, but that's a better test, although still not perfect because you'll instinctively prepare yourself to land because you know what's coming.

You say he kicked up mcgee's foot, but why wasnt the strain on the front of his foot then? You don't kick up 200 pounds, cause a fracture, and yet not injure any other tissue in the area. His strain was in the rear, which comes from extreme dorsiflexion(which is evident in the video), not plantar flexion (which isn't evident). That's not just my guess, but what the injury is saying. If you sprain your ankle and strain is on the outside of you ankle, then where was the major stretch? Not on the inside, but the outside.

I wish i could explain it to you in person to show you how the knee moves when the heel plants vs when it doesnt. When i look at Yao's knee it helps me understand how the foot is moving at the moment that's not very visible on the clip. You can try it yourself and play around with knee position and not planting your heel. First start off in major dorsiflexion though, with only the toes touching the floor.