The turning point of the Los Angeles Lakers’ first-round series with the Phoenix Suns was the unfortunate injury suffered by Anthony Davis in Game 4. The left groin sprain basically knocked Davis out for the remainder of the series, save for the start of Game 6 in which an obviously hampered Davis attempted to play, but lasted only five minutes.
The Lakers’ superstar re-aggravated the groin in those five minutes and now will be on the mend at the outset of this offseason. Exactly how long it will take Davis to recover from the groin issue is unclear, however.
“I’m gonna talk to my trainer and see what that plan is,” Davis noted after the Lakers’ Game 6 loss. “He’ll probably call me tomorrow and help me figure that out. But no, I don’t. They were saying before when it first happened it’s a 10-14 day injury, usually what it is with the groin Grade 1. So after tonight after re-aggravating it, I don’t know if it’s gonna be another 14 or whatever but I’ll talk to him and tomorrow just kind of see what the plan is.”
That 10-14 day recovery timeframe shows why Davis looked the way he did. Davis tried to return from a two-week injury in just four days so it’s no wonder why his movement was so severely hampered.
Thankfully for Davis, he will now have an extended offseason to make sure he is exactly where he needs to be for next season. And while some have wondered whether Davis may need to change up his offseason work, Davis disagrees.
“My offseason regimen is pretty intense,” Davis added. “Like I said, this offseason I didn’t get to be a part of what I normally do because of the shorter offseason but usually when the season’s over, I have a month to just let my body heal and then I’m going six weeks just straight weight training every day. And then you get to the basketball part about a month and a half before training camp. But that kind of comes back easy.”
This season was a difficult one for Davis who, after a relatively healthy first season with the Lakers, suffered the most significant injury of his career. The superstar made it clear that he is looking forward to being able to have a normal offseason this summer.
“So I think it’s just, like I said, it was an odd season for us, odd offseason for me. I mentioned before, you just try to battle with resting from a season and trying to get ready for a season. I had that offseason last summer and was rarely injured last season so whatever it was, it wasn’t anything significant things that I was able to play through. I’m excited to get back to my regular offseason programming with my trainers and get ready for next year.”
Davis reveals initial thoughts after re-aggravating groin
Davis truly wanted to be on the court to help his team win and was willing to give it his best effort despite the obvious injury. Once the groin sprain was re-aggravated Davis was extremely disappointed.
“I was already hurting coming into the game and when I jumped to block Book’s shot it kind of re-aggravated and I felt that same pain that I did in Game 4,” Davis noted. “At first, the first thought was ‘f***.’ You got out there and you try to give it your all and just give your team a chance, you feel like you let your team down, especially when you’re a player of my caliber, your team wants you on the floor, needs you on the floor and you can’t.
But Davis did receive some solace from his teammates’ support in the immediate aftermath. “Obviously, they know I tried or whatever but just that sense of you wish you were on the floor to help the troops. So that was really it and all I was hearing was guys saying ‘we got you, we got you!’ So that was like good for me to hear.”
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