New Orleans Pelicans power forwardAnthony Davis recently revealed that not only will he miss the remainder of this season due to injury, he has been playing with a torn labrum for the past 3 seasons.
Miami Heat shooting guard Dwyane Wade understands Davis’ situation better than most; he has dealt with a myriad of injuries over the course of his 13-year NBA career. In fact Wade has been in a position that’s almost identical to the one that Davis is in. Like Davis, Wade was shut down in the midst of his 4th season due to shoulder and knee injuries.
Wade had words of advice for the young Davis. He spoke to ESPN’s Michael Wallace about where Davis should go from here:
“It’s going to be a tough road, trust me,” Wade said to ESPN.com of Davis. “When you’re young like he is, you can bounce back from these things, especially with how advanced things are today. He’s got all the talent in the world. I’m sure he’s going to be fine.
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It is unclear when Davis will have surgery for his shoulder and knee, but he told reporters on Monday that he “might as well knock both out at the same time.”
Wade had his procedures done at the same time too, a decision he still cringes to think about.
“It sucked. It was hard, man,” Wade said as the Heat wrapped up Monday’s practice before departing for New Orleans. “I didn’t want to have them both at the same time. I fought it to the very last day. I didn’t agree to do it until I went in there that day to the hospital. For one, I knew how difficult it was already going to be to rehab a shoulder. That’s six months. And then, it’s the knee too.”
The scariest part for Wade came during the initial days after the double surgery.
“My whole left side just shut down,” Wade recalled. “It was a hopeless feeling. I had to be in the bed for 10 days in a row, for 23 hours a day. I got one hour a day to be up. I couldn’t use the bathroom or anything. Everything was shut down. I had to get one of those remote mobile [scooters] to take me around. I built a ramp in my house, and that was my [free] hour, just riding it around the house. That’s how it was the first two weeks. After that, I was able to travel, then able to do small rehab.”
That sounds seriously awful. Hopefully Davis will be able to learn from Wade’s mistake.
Wade had one more piece of advice for Davis: Don’t rush back.
“If this is something he’s going to go through, the biggest thing is patience,” Wade said. “It’s not coming back from those procedures too soon. I got those surgeries [in May], and I think I was there trying to do stuff in training camp. But maybe I should have waited longer to make sure I was 100 percent or as close to it as I could be. So it’s more about patience than anything. Eventually, you bounce back.”
Davis will have a difficult path ahead of him. Luckily for him, he has a fellow player who has been there before to advise him.
