How long will Yao Ming be out with his injury to the navicular bone in his foot?”
As the NBA draft approached, the grim truth about Yao Ming’s (notes) broken left foot hung like an anvil over the Houston Rockets . The fear isn’t that he’s just lost for next season, but longer. The Rockets and Yao’s reps are frightened over his future, and the concern is the most base of all: Does Yao Ming ever play again? “The realization has hit them that this is grave,” one NBA general manager said. For now, the Rockets have privately told league peers it could be a full season before Yao might be able to return to basketball. Multiple league executives, officials close to Yao and two doctors with knowledge of the diagnoses are describing a troubling, re-fracture of his navicular bone. Three pins were inserted a year ago, but the foot cracked in the playoffs and isn’t healing. “It sounds like he’s missing most of next season, if not the entire 82 games,” one league executive who has had recent discussions with the Houston front office told Yahoo! Sports. “That’s all that [the Rock
Rockets center Yao Ming’s left foot injury could be severe enough to be season ending or even career-threatening depending on the success of potential treatments chosen, Rockets team physician Tom Clanton said Monday. “At this point, the injury has the potential for him missing this next season and could be career threatening,” Clanton said. “One of the things we are trying to get is a consensus opinion on that, to make certain there is no option we are overlooking that would provide an earlier return or would be an option for treatment that he would prefer rather than doing additional surgery.” Clanton, responding to a story on Yahoo Sports that reported that the Rockets and Yao representatives are concerned Yao will never play again, said that Yao could choose to try again to immobilize the foot in the hopes that the hairline fracture of the tarsal navicular bone would heal on its own, as several of his previous bone injuries have and doctors expected this time. “We are not going to
