SMF - Just Installed!
If the Phoenix Suns are going to win an NBA championship this season -- and that is their stated goal -- they will most likely have to do it without star frontcourtman Amaré Stoudemire.Stoudemire's comeback from surgery on his left knee lasted only three games before the Suns decided to shut him down, "maybe for three days, maybe for 10 days, maybe for the rest of the season," according to coach/general manager Mike D'Antoni.The best guess? The rest of the season.D'Antoni made the decision hours after the Suns' most disappointing loss of the season, a 110-72 torching by the New Jersey Nets on Monday night at Continental Airlines Arena. Stoudemire started that game but played only 14 minutes (missing all six of his shots from the floor) and was obviously at no more than 30 percent efficiency. He jogged up and down the court, had very little lift and even winced from time to time when he landed."It's mostly stiffness but I have some pain, too," said Stoudemire on Tuesday morning from Milwaukee, where the Suns, 47-22 and still the odds-on favorite to win the Pacific Division, are scheduled to play the Bucks this evening. "I felt like I was improving -- that's why I came back -- but then the knee just started getting tighter and tighter. It felt like I was going to pull something all the time."Stoudemire had surgery on Oct. 11, during the preseason, to repair a microfracture (about one centimeter wide) on his left knee. That was about a week after he had signed a five-year extension worth about $73 million. Dr. Tom Carter, the Suns' team physician, compared the lesion to a "pothole," which Carter said would get bigger and become harder to treat as time passed. Carter used a surgical awl to poke five shallow holes around the lesion, three millimeters apart, to facilitate bleeding that would harden and form the "fibrocartilage" that would fill in the tiny hole.The Suns heard no dearth of dire reminders about other players (Chris Webber, Penny Hardaway, Kenyon Martin, to name three) whose careers had been thwarted by similar surgeries. But the plan all along was to get Stoudemire back for this season, provided there were no extenuating circumstances; the initial projection was for Stoudemire to come back "around the All-Star Game" in February. Carter said comparisons with other injuries were meaningless, considering Stoudemire's age (he's just 23) and the fact that his knee was in otherwise ideal condition.
