Karl-Anthony Towns’ knee patellar tendinopathy is very common among basketball players and most often treated conservatively with physical therapy.
But it can also be debilitating and lead to further damage or surgery, according to an expert surgeon.
“It’s the most common injury I see in basketball athletes. It’s not even classified as an injury half the time because it just kind of exists and people live with it,” Dr. Abi Campbell, the director of NYU Langone Center for Women’s Sports Medicine, told The Post. “The fact that it’s flared up so severely that he’s had to take time out either points to the fact that it’s cautionary in order to maintain him for the next set of games. Or, it’s having such a severe flare-up that he’s not going to be able to play at full capacity and he has no other option but to come out.
“If that’s the case, I think that in the offseason the only option is to have it fully addressed because it seems like it’s been lingering and not getting better.”
Towns missed two games this season with patellar tendinopathy in his right knee — one on Dec. 7, the other on Monday — and was listed as questionable for Wednesday’s game against the Raptors with the same ailment.
As Campbell explained, patellar tendinopathy is “microtearing of the tendon” and a “chronic issue,” with a recent study linking the injury to between 80-90 percent of college athletes after their seasons.
“It essentially kind of lives there and goes dormant by strengthening the muscles around it. Sometimes a tendon can heal itself in those tiny gaps. But more often it just hangs out and flares up here and there,” said Campbell, who has neither treated Towns nor viewed his medical records. “So my guess is [Towns] is having a flare-up. I guarantee this has been there for years. And it comes and goes. And when it bugs him, the good prognosis is usually it can quiet down with some targeted therapy. Obviously get some [anti]-inflammatories in there, some rehab techniques that can be very effective in quieting things down.
“There’s also bracing and taping and straps that can be used. So I suspect he’ll do that quickly. The potential worst-case scenario is that it progresses into a more significant partial tear of the tendon that would require more aggressive treatment. But that’s pretty unlikely in the absence of an acute injury.”
There was a brief scare of an acute injury near the end of Saturday’s loss to the Bulls, when Towns fell to the court after contact on his and-1 and limped to the locker room.
However, Towns, who had been favoring his right leg for much of the fourth quarter, felt good enough postgame to go through an exhaustive workout and avoided serious injury.
He was characterized as day-to-day by Tom Thibodeau on Monday.
In Chicago, Towns, who entered Wednesday averaging his most minutes since 2017-18, was in clear pain but said he opted against asking out of the game.
“I ain’t going to quit. That’s not my M.O. I want to keep going,” Towns said.
Campbell said pain is only part of the problem with a patellar tendinitis flare-up.
“The pain itself is usually pretty significant but it’s not so much the pain you feel — these athletes are super tough, they can handle a lot. But it’s more what it does to the quad,” she said. “So you get this sharp knife-like sensation that just by a feedback loop to your nerve will kind of shut down the quad tendon.
“And you literally will not be able to push off that leg or jump off that leg like he could before. So it results in pain and limited function.”
In short — the good news is the injury is common and usually manageable. The bad news is it lingers and flares up.
“In order to heal, there are a lot of options but unfortunately most of them [like a PRP injection] need to be done in the offseason because they require some down time,” Campbell said. “So the natural way — which I’m sure he’s been doing for a long time — is doing blood-flow restriction training to try to strengthen your quad muscle to take the load off the patellar tendon, all those straps and braces you see them wear.
“And resting.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
