Portland Trail Blazers' star LaMarcus Aldridge to miss the rest of the season - NBA Update
The Portland Trail Blazers announced on Thursday that their All-Star power forward, LaMarcus Aldridge will undergo surgery on his right hip which will rule him out for the rest of the season.
Aldridge earlier revealed that he had been experiencing pain for the past two weeks and was not sure about when or how he sustained the injury. The date for the arthroscopic surgery has not been set yet.
With another seven games to go in the season, Portland, who are 28-31 in the season are currently 4 and a half games behind in their pursuit for a playoff spot. This injury to Aldridge adds yet another blow to the Blazers agonizing
season.
After a brilliant start, the Trail Blazers started to struggle and such was their slump, that even with a good coach and star cast; they never managed to make a comeback. Right at the end of the midseason trade deadline, Portland
fired their head coach Nate McMillan and replaced him with new interim coach Kaleb Canales.
The Blazers also let go of Greg Oden, who throughout his career has struggled with injuries and could not live up to the stardom he once promised. It was complemented with the departure of Gerald Wallace as the Trail Blazers looked
to rebuild. Their All Star guard, Brandon Roy also retired during this season after he announced that he was suffering from career threatening knee injuries.
Since the arrival of Canales, the Blazers have gone 8-8 and defeated the Golden State Warriors 118-110 on Wednesday night. Aldridge did not feature in the game as per the coach`s decision.
During the season, Aldridge was averaging career high numbers of 21.7 points per game, 8 rebounds and 2.4 assists. He was shooting the ball 51.2 percent from the field and based on these performances the fourth year big got the
call to be first time All-Star this season.
Although the injury to his hip appears to be minor, the recovery time has been predicted around 3 or 4 months making everybody unsure about whether Aldridge would feature in the London Olympics set to take place in August. Aldridge
was part of the team that won the gold back in 2008.
Aldridge has had problems with his hip back in 2005 when he was in Texas. He had to go through a surgery back then as well to get it fixed. Even though Aldridge described the injury back in 2005 more severe than this one, he surely
was very disappointed with the fact that he has to miss out on the rest of the season for the Blazers.
"I'm very disappointed," Aldridge said. "I feel we have a really good group of guys here. I feel like everybody's getting being. I feel we're starting to find a really good rhythm together. So it's definitely hard to do right now."
Tags: