Golden State Warriors big man Kevon Looney played through a brick wall of pain during his stint in the NBA Finals upon suffering a costal cartilage fracture, which kept him from a few games down the stretch. The trusty backup admitted he has had to let his injury heal through the summer, recently getting cleared for five-on-five play a couple of weeks ago:
“The first month of rehab, yeah, I couldn’t do much at all. Just let it rest. Let it heal,” Looney told Anthony Slater of The Athletic. “That was kind of boring. After that, it kind of picked up. But it took longer than I thought it would. I actually didn’t get cleared to play 5-on-5 until a couple weeks ago. But I was able to do some drills, get shots up, try to stay in a rhythm.
“But it’s an injury where I have to keep everything around it right because everything is connected. It’s kind of tedious, a lot of boring rehab work.”
Looney admits he has had to do a lot of work to keep this injury from flaring up, since it connects his ribs and collarbone as well as other parts of the body:
“Yeah. I’m healthy. But it’s a lot of maintenance work,” he said. “It’s kind of like my last injury (two hip surgeries). You have a major injury and even once the injury is over, you still got to keep doing the small rehab stuff. Man, I’m used to just going out there, doing a couple stretches and let’s just play. But now I really have to focus on this injury to make sure everything is moving right.”
Looney may not start, but he will have a bump in minutes this year in a big-man rotation featuring Draymond Green and Willie Cauley-Stein. Luckily for Looney, he's gearing up to full health now and ready to do some bumping for rebounding position.
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