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Transcript
00:00and time for clear to play. Take you inside the tent, get you updated on the latest injuries in
00:04the bay. Proud to partner with UCSF Health on this segment and bring in professor of orthopedic
00:09surgery, Dr. Nirav Pandya. Doc, good evening. What's going on? I'm doing good. How are you
00:15guys doing? We're great and there's only one appropriate question to ask to start off,
00:21which is the fact that in his mid-30s, after what Clay Thompson's body has been through,
00:28what is your medical take on what he's been able to achieve to even be back out on the court?
00:35I mean, it's simply phenomenal. I mean, people don't come back from one of these injuries at
00:40the same level. So the fact that he had both of them back to back, came back to the NBA,
00:45won a championship and still a contributor on the NBA floor at his age is simply remarkable.
00:50And I think with all the feelings everyone has about Clay, if you take the 10,000 foot
00:54view and are like, what has he accomplished as an athlete? It's pretty phenomenal. And the fact
00:59that we're out here celebrating him where he's got several more years of his career, hopefully
01:02there just speaks volumes to the grind that he went through to get back to where he was.
01:06Yeah, it's spectacular. It's a definite testimony to his fitness and his work ethic that he came
01:11back from the ACL and the Achilles to be able to come back. And I'm thinking about
01:16Dre Greenlaw, who was trying to come back from his Achilles. And now we're sitting here, Doc,
01:21about nine months removed from the actual episode. Are we thinking that another month,
01:2710 months, is that too soon? Or is that maybe a fair timeline for him to be able to return?
01:33I think somewhere between that nine to 11 month range is totally fair. You see him doing stuff
01:38at practice. We know the Achilles has healed. So now it's just a matter of, does he feel
01:42comfortable? And then number two is, can he be impactful on the field? The last thing you want
01:46is him going out there, not being able to cut, pivot, do the things he needs to do to help the
01:50team win. So I think a lot of that comes down to number one, how is he feeling? Number two,
01:54how does Kyle Shanahan and the rest of the staff feel that he looks out there? But I think that
01:58if you look at most positions, key players at his position who've had this injury,
02:02right around 10 months is where you can see him come back and be an impact on the field.
02:11There we go. While we're on the San Francisco 49ers, Christian McCaffrey,
02:15what'd you think? How do you look? He looked pretty good. I mean, for the fact of someone
02:20who hasn't played football for a long period of time, and I think that I was really looking at is
02:24how many touches would he have? How many, how much percentage of the offensive plays
02:27would he play? And I think he played something like 88% of the offensive snaps and had about
02:3219 touches, which is pretty close to where he was last year. So I think that that means that
02:37they're not super concerned about it. If they're getting them out there and then playing them that
02:40much, he looked pretty good. Obviously there's going to be a little bit of rust, but I think
02:43that bodes well for where they felt he was coming into this game and what it means for the rest of
02:47the season. And you didn't really hear any reports of pain flaring up or any issues. So I think this
02:52is hopefully going to be smooth sailing for him as the season goes on. And just watching his
02:57movements out there, and I was really fixated in the pregame where he was going through his warm-up
03:01and he looked explosive with the high leg movement. Did you see anything on the field
03:07from those 88% of the plays that would make you think that he actually was ready to go and 100%
03:13back? Yeah. I mean, the one thing you're looking for is those quick sudden movements. So like,
03:18you know, when there's a scripted play, everything goes well, that's one thing.
03:20But when the plays break down, he has to kind of, you know, cut and pivot around defenders.
03:25He looked pretty smooth. Now the first couple of plays, you saw a little bit of hesitation, but
03:29he looked the same explosive self. Now, obviously timing's going to take a little bit of time,
03:32but I didn't see anything that would suggest that he's not explosive, that he was compensating for
03:36any degree of pain or weakness, which once again, a great sign for him. And he looked a lot better
03:42and played a lot more than I would have expected him to play this first game back. So a month plus
03:46back from a high ankle sprain, does that affect the kicker, Doc? Yes, it does. And I think there's
03:54both the physical part of it, which, you know, you're putting so much force on that leg when
03:59you're kicking. But we also have to think about this is that, you know, with kickers nowadays,
04:04they're trained at such a young age to get the 65, 70 yards. I mean, they can kick. What really
04:08makes a difference is the mental part of it. And you do the same thing again and again and again,
04:12and you just can't recreate what it's going to feel like coming off a high ankle sprain to kick
04:16again. So for him to miss half his kicks, because he's coming off this high ankle sprain, it's not
04:21necessarily potentially a physical thing, but a mental thing. I'm glad that he was able to hit
04:24that game winner, but I would expect that over the next week or two, you should see more consistency
04:29simply because that timing, how his leg is going to feel was just got to be off. And that's going
04:33to be coming from a high ankle sprain. Yeah, especially when it comes from the kicking leg
04:37where the impact of the ball had to feel a certain kind of way. Doc, I want to ask you one more about
04:42the NBA because Chet Holmgren had a really scary injury and it's going down as a pelvic fracture.
04:49What exactly does that mean and how will that limit him going forward as a big man with a
04:55fractured pelvis? It's a big injury, you know, and I think one of the things you can imagine
05:00that when you fall to the ground, you can see after Wiggins kind of dunked over and he falls
05:03to the ground, you get that blow right to the side of your pelvis and it just compresses almost
05:08like if you get hit by a car. So it's a big injury. There's a lot of force that goes across
05:13it. Not only is it painful because all your core muscles attached there, but also a lot of the
05:16muscles, your quads, your hip flexors kind of attached in that region as well too. So not only
05:20are you dealing with bone having to heal, you also have to deal with all these muscles healing as
05:24well too. So this could be a several month injury. And the fact that he is slimmer also makes it a
05:30little bit harder to come back because you're going to get impact to that area. You just don't
05:33have that soft tissue to kind of cushion that area. So definitely something to look out for.
05:37And this could be a several month process for him to get back. Doc, we're not letting you leave until
05:42you tell us who plays basketball tonight. Tonight, I have to go with, it's Clay Thompson. Clay Thompson
05:49plays basketball. He does. He does. He does. Thank you, Doc. No problem. Take care, guys.
05:55All right, there he goes. The proceeding was sponsored by UCSF Health.