Irving's attending physician: Knee injury difficult to recover from, could affect career

Beijing time March 29, the Celtics narrowly defeated the Jazz on the road, earning their fifth consecutive win. And this winning streak is simply incredible for the Celtics, because they have suffered the most severe wave of injuries in the league at this stage.

The consecutive absences of Theis and Morris have given Celtics fans a real headache. But now an even worse piece of news has been reported by US media: Selene Parekh, a professor at Duke University, Irving's alma mater, an orthopedic expert and one of Irving's attending physicians, stated that Irving's knee injury will be very difficult to fully recover from.

"After this minimally invasive surgery, it is very likely that Irving will not be able to fully recover in time, and this knee problem will continue to plague him for the rest of his career," Parekh said. "The sudden warmth and burning sensation in the knee will persist. When he rests, the sensation will improve, but when he uses the knee, it will burn again. And if the knee burns to a certain degree, it will affect his performance."

"In my view, if this problem is already very serious, and previously he wanted to rest so that the injury could heal, then if he plays a large number of minutes in the playoffs, this will certainly become a problem."

"What you will see is that when he rests, the condition calms down. When he returns to the court, perhaps he looks excellent in the first few games, and then he starts to have the burning problem, and he still cannot rest, so the pain will keep increasing with each game. Ultimately, this injury will become a recurring problem until he has whatever is inside his knee removed. If he keeps pushing through, it will affect his ligaments, his kneecap, and his career."

This really could not sound any worse. We know that Irving and Rose play in a very similar style. Unlike Westbrook's straight-ahead approach, both Irving and Rose accelerate and change direction very frequently and with great amplitude. Such habits inevitably cause wear on the knee, and over time this leads to excessive knee wear, after which knee injuries follow one after another.

With such a precedent already before us, could Irving become the second Rose? This really weighs heavily on one's heart, because without changing his playing style, the knee injury cannot be eradicated, and changing his playing style will inevitably leave Irving at a loss, like an incurable disease entangling him. We can only wish Irving good health for the rest of his career, and let us cherish every moment while we can.

To avoid being considered as fabricating news, part of the original text is excerpted as follows:

“What you will see is a scenario where he rests, it calms down, he gets back out there, maybe he looks pretty good for the first few games as it starts to flare up and he has no rest that pain will ramp up as each game goes on and you’ll start seeing an accumulation of this loss of performance over a series of games.

“It will end up being this kind of cyclable issue which will become a nagging problem for him throughout the rest of the season until he gets that hardware removed.

“The one danger is, if he’s already having a lot of pain and he goes out there, you continue to irritate the tendon, the concern is do you eventually rip through skin so that is a big concern that they have to worry about.”

He added: “I think there will be lingering effect from this injury - the patella fracture the the had - that will continue to effect his career.”