Maliq Brown injury vigil

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Yeah, when I tore my ACL, I could walk fine. I was convinced I hadn't torn it. So convinced I played another game of basketball a couple of weeks later before I realized it was torn. And made it through several minutes of the game before I cut the wrong way... and then I realized it was torn.

Even after that, I could straight-line run (I wasn't a very smart patient; played a game of softball before my surgery).

So a sprained knee would not necessarily preclude walking fine at all.
Okay, now I don't feel so bad... When I tore my achilles, I felt the recovery was going so well after a few weeks that I decided to toss the Aerobie in the back yard with my kids. Made the brilliant decision to jump up to catch a high toss and was convinced I had re-torn my Achilles when I felt a pop and landed to see blood trickling down my leg. My doctor (nice, patient guy) examined me later that day and assuaged my main fears, saying something to the effect of "You would have to try really, really hard to re-rupture that Achilles after the surgery, and even then you might not succeed. Nope, you just ripped the scar tissue open a bit. But I am putting you back in the boot for a few weeks—you clearly can't be trusted to stay out of trouble."

Maliq—if you're reading this thread, don't go out throwing Aerobies on the quad with anyone!
 
Brian Geisinger with another great write-up, this time on how the loss of Maliq will affect Duke at both ends of floor. Covers a lot of the same grounds as some of the posts in this thread, but in much greater detail. Also points out that not having Maliq against UNC would be a big loss, because it would be a good strategy to switch 1-5 against the Cheats.

 
Perhaps a positive data point if Maliq's injury is indeed a "knee sprain": UConn's Paige Bueckers (yes, making an analogy across gender lines here) returned from her own knee sprain in just two weeks. Given her history with ACL injuries, and the fact that her injury looked much worse when it happened than Maliq's, this gives me some hope that Maliq's recovery time could indeed be on the order of weeks and not months. Of course, we don't really know with certainty what his injury actually is, so perhaps this is all moot.
 
Perhaps a positive data point if Maliq's injury is indeed a "knee sprain": UConn's Paige Bueckers (yes, making an analogy across gender lines here) returned from her own knee sprain in just two weeks. Given her history with ACL injuries, and the fact that her injury looked much worse when it happened than Maliq's, this gives me some hope that Maliq's recovery time could indeed be on the order of weeks and not months. Of course, we don't really know with certainty what his injury actually is, so perhaps this is all moot.
Agreed - Duke does keep the cards close to the vest with regard to the actual diagnosis of injured players.

Unfortunately, there's a lot of variability in the colloquial usage of "sprain" as a "diagnosis". Sports medicine orthopedic surgeons, for instance, will generally refer to sprains only in the instance of a ligament stretch (as has been discussed in other situations on the boards in the past, a sprain can be anything from a mild stretch to a complete tear of the ligament - all of which are still a "sprain"). Other ortho sub-specialties may or may not hold to this strict definition. Furthermore, other types of medical providers may have a far broader usage of the term.

When examination of the knee and/or advanced imaging like a MRI isn't done to definitively diagnose a sprain, sometimes an incompletely evaluated injury is called a sprain, referring to a more general usage of the term. Throw in the usage of eponyms for diagnoses and mis-characterizations of strains, bone bruises, contusions, etc., as "sprains", what's relayed to the public as a "sprained knee" could literally mean anything. In my mind, as far as we know Brown could have had anything from a mild contusion to the knee to a torn ACL from the information shared with us. Anything more specific is speculation based on what we were able to see at the time of the injury (the mechanism of the injury) his public appearances since the injury, and CJS's use of the words "sprain" and "next several games, minimum".

The point is that, as Scott summarizes in the quote, it's all moot unless a definitive diagnosis is shared with the public. I wouldn't read too much into just that one word, sprain, that has such a broad usage. It's unfortunately very hard to determine his return to play date based on the very limited information shared with us.
 
I haven't watched every minute of every game but when I see Evans in there is see a kid that's confident and not afraid to shoot a open shot.I hope he's at Duke a long time.
 
as has been discussed in other situations on the boards in the past, a sprain can be anything from a mild stretch to a complete tear of the ligament - all of which are still a "sprain"
I don't believe this to be the case. No remotely qualified individual would call a torn ACL a sprain.
 
I haven't watched every minute of every game but when I see Evans in there is see a kid that's confident and not afraid to shoot a open shot.I hope he's at Duke a long time.
He and KK don't need to be on the court at the same time outside of specific situations. They figure out that rotation and I think it will all work out.
 
I don't believe this to be the case. No remotely qualified individual would call a torn ACL a sprain.
You'd think so. But, technically, a torn ACL is a grade 3 sprain (just look up the ICD-10 code for ACL tear if you don't believe me). As a sports medicine trained orthopedic surgeon, I have to take everything I'm told with a grain of salt. Trust, but verify. Even from orthopedic colleagues.
 
discerning ANYTHING from Duke officials about injuries is just a pointless exercise, it really is. There was once a time when real injury updates existed, but they ended when the last Oldsmobile wobbled off the assembly line.
 
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