Sawt Falasteen - There's optimism Wembanyama will make strong recovery

The 21-year-old Frenchman was diagnosed with blood clots in his right shoulder after returning to the San Antonio Spurs following the NBA All-Star Game in San Francisco.

The 7-foot-3 (2.21m) center is expected to miss the remainder of the 2024-25 season, news that stunned the NBA when revealed on Thursday.

"I'm just glad they caught it early," said four-time NBA champion Shaquille O'Neal, a 7-foot-1 star center.

"According to my doctor friends, it's common for guys who are very large, especially very tall, especially with all the flying we do.

"It's scary. It's something you can possibly not wake up from."

O'Neal praised the Spurs for quickly ruling out "Wemby" for the final games of the season.

"I'm glad the Spurs organization loves him enough to say... we care about you, we know you're our future. We're shutting it down for the rest of the year," O'Neal said.

"He's a great kid. Someday he will be the face of the league."

Victoria Tchaikovski, a doctor specialized in treating athletes at the Clinique Drouot in Paris, said Wembanyama's case was "quite rare" because it was in his shoulder and cases of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) are more often found in the legs.

In high-level athletes, it is a "effort-related DVT," she told AFP.

"The risk is that the clot will migrate, especially into the lungs, so it must be treated," she said. "The blood must be thinned so the clot can be re-absorbed."

That means Wembanyama cannot compete in contact sports like basketball during that process for risk of such troubles as a pulmonary embolism, when a clot travels to his lungs.

"He could bleed if he takes a blow to the head and if he takes a hit elsewhere, he could get an enormous bruise," she said.

A cautionary tale is that of former Miami Heat forward Chris Bosh, who was diagnosed with a blood clot in one of his lungs and was benched for the season in February 2015.

In February 2016, he was benched for the season with a blood clot in a leg. He failed to pass a physical over clotting issues and missed the entire 2016-17 campaign before the NBA ruled in June 2017 his blood clot issues were a career-ending injury.

UCLA vascular surgeon Hugh Gelabert told Sports Illustrated that Wembanyama's situation is very different from Bosh and less a threat to end his career early because the clots were in a shoulder and not the legs.

Shoulder clots are generally lower risk and smaller overall than leg clots, Gelabert said.

He performed a clot-removal operation in 2019 on the right arm of NBA forward Brandon Ingram, now with Toronto after his season was cut short by DVT in 2019. Ingram returned the following campaign and was named the 2020 NBA Most Improved Player.

- 'Has got to be scary' -

The Spurs are 24-29, 12th in the Western Conference and three games behind Golden State for the final play-in spot. They are six games behind the Los Angeles Clippers for the final automatic playoff berth.

San Antonio had traded for De'Aaron Fox earlier this month and were seen as a rising threat until Wembanyama's setback.

"Just wish him good health. That has got to be scary when you get that news," retired NBA great Charles Barkley said. "This is a bad thing for the Spurs, for the NBA."

Fox was more concerned about Wembanyama's health than his playing status.

"You just wish for him to be healthy," Fox said. "Whether he is able to play basketball or not, we just want him to be healthy."

There will be no way to replace Wembanyama's all-around contribution as scorer, passer, rebounder and shot blocker, Fox said.

"We all just have to come together," he said. "He's a very unique player. One person isn't going to be able to maintain the production that he gave us so we have to come together and do it together."

P.Tamimi--SF-PST