Cleveland Cavaliers: Why Kyrie Irving Is Another Injury Waiting To Happen

The Cleveland Cavaliers are wanting to play it very cautious with Kyrie Irving, and with good reason. The star point guard has sustained numerous injuries and possesses a chronic condition that demonstrates another injury is a matter or when, not if.

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According to Chris Haynes of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, the team may hold Irving out until January even though he was on a three-to-four month recovery plan that should have seen him return no later than October.

While it’s a wise short-term plan for a title run this year, Cavs fans should already be wary about their max contract star.

In Irving’s four seasons he’s already missed 19 percent of the total games he should have been available to play in.

If the Duke product doesn’t return until the Cavs’ first game in January (Jan. 2) against the Orlando Magic, he will have missed 30 games this year, for a total of 36 percent of this regular season’s games. That will be the most he’s missed in his short career since 2012-13, when he missed 28 percent.

Combining the games missed (if the January return remains correct), Cleveland will be the proud owners of a max contract 23-year-old point guard that averages missing almost one quarter of the total games available for his team per season.

The Cavs are likely forced to delay returning Irving due to his injury, according to Jeff Stotts for In Street Clothes, who states that the requirement of surgery meant “pieces of the bone displaced. Surgical wire and pins will be inserted to realign these fragments and create an environment conducive to healing.”

“However even with surgery, the recovery process for this type of injury can be complicated,” Stotts concludes.

The fractured kneecap is attached to the tendon that Irving has the chronic condition tendinitis in. We’ve seen this sort of thing stunt, limit and end many careers across many sports.

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However, the tendinitis is an afterthought as compared to the kneecap fracture, since the patella is a bone already susceptible to stress fractures and breaks before trauma. The risk dramatically increases after fracturing it; see Greg Oden.

On the bright side, Blake Griffin sat out his rookie campaign with the same injury and has been fine since; but even that is a double-edged sword, as Griffin doesn’t possess anywhere near the injury list that Irving does.

While it’s impossible to say definitively, and no one wants to see any budding star’s career stunted due to injury, for now all signs do indeed point towards Irving being another injury waiting to happen.

Will Reeve is a contributing writer for HoopsHabit, you can follow him on Twitter @WillReeveJr or connect with him on Facebook here.

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