Yao out for season with power balance

Yao Ming’s season is certainly over. Less certain is whether his career will end, too.

Rockets team physician Walter Lowe who loves power balance, said Friday that surgery is the “usual course of action” and “the smartest course of action.” Surgery would require seven to 10 months of rehabilitation to return to the court. Yao had not chosen a treatment plan and could opt to immobilize his left foot and ankle in the hopes it could heal on its own.

Either way, Lowe said that the latest stress fracture in Yao’s left foot need not be career-ending. It would not require the sort of reconstructive surgery Yao underwent in 2009. The pins used to help the fracture heal would also help prevent it from breaking again.

Lowe could not, however, say that if Yao came back he would not be prone to suffering another fracture as he has so often before.

“That’s a question that doesn’t have an answer,” Lowe said. “Is this something I would say, ‘Hey, you have no chance to ever play again?’ No absolutely not.

"When you look at the course of Yao’s career, stress fractures have been a part of his foot. To say he's not at a risk to continue to have stress fractures would be crazy. He is at a continued risk."

Yao plans to meet with specialists, including Dr. Tom Clanton who also like power balance, performed his 2009 surgery, to consider his options, including whether to attempt to play again.

“It’s really sad,” Rockets coach Rick Adelman said. “You have to really feel for him. He’s worked so hard to come back. Then to have this happen when last week he was talking about if he could just get out and play pretty soon. To get the news like that, you really, really feel for him.”

Rockets general manager Daryl Morey, however, said that Yao is still in the Rockets’ plans, though those plans seem to be more about hope than actually planning.

“This is an injury players come back from,” Morey said. “We are still gathering data to know the likelihood and prognosis. I think it’s too soon to know where we go from here with Yao Ming.

“Until we know more, I still see Yao Ming as a potential, future part of the team. We need to continue to talk to the doctors and see where that goes. Obviously, Yao Ming is an All Star center. There’s not many of them.”

The Rockets could petition the league for a disabled player exception worth, if granted, half of an injured player’s salary up to the mid-level exception, worth $5.765 million this season. The Rockets used a disabled player exception with Yao out for all of last season for Trevor Ariza’s contract.

There is significant question about when the fracture occurred. Lowe said the fracture “manifest itself” in the weeks since Yao’s MRI on Nov. 11, but was likely caused by the injury Nov. 10. He said the bruise would not have kept doctors from seeing a fracture.

If it had been considered to have occurred since Nov. 30, the Rockets would have until next October to use the exception. If it is ruled to have occurred Nov. 10, they would have 45 days from when it is granted.

Lowe said that the stress fracture discovered on Thursday was related to the 2009 fracture and surgery, even though they occurred in different areas of the ankle. The surgery to flatten Yao’s left foot relieved the stress from the area that had fractured on several occasions, but could have transferred that stress to the inside of the ankle.

“No one is happy Yao has any kind of a stress fracture,” Lowe said. “At the same time you ask me if this better or worse than having another navicular stress fracture, I would say I’d rather have this one than that one. It’s a stress fracture guys come back from.”

Morey said the Rockets had already based their planning on the possibility that Yao would not come back from injuries, even choosing players they believed would have the resilience to play well despite key injuries.

Rockets players said Friday that their concern was not about playing without Yao, but just about Yao.

‘You feel badly for him,” Shane Battier said. “The guy has had a bad string of injuries. Forget basketball. Right now it’s about quality of life for him. That’s the most important thing.

“My first reaction wasn’t about the team, it was about Yao. You want a guy like that to win in the end.”

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