Chris Paul injured his knee just a few days ago against the Bulls by colliding with a camera. In fact his knee was already hurt before that and it didn’t withstand the second bang. Now Chris will undergo arthroscopic surgery for a cartilage tear in his left knee.

 
The first impression after hearing these news could be that Hornets can already forget about contending this season. Maybe they should think more about the lottery balls. But everything is not as bad as it seems!

 
Chris will only miss 2 months maximum so that means he will be back before the playoffs. Usually when I hear that someone will undergo a surgery the first thought is that he will have to miss a lot of time, at least some 6 months or so. If that would be the case with Chris than the Hornets would obviously be in a lot more trouble than they are now.

 
Also some good news for New Orleans – rookie point guard Darren Collison who is replacing Paul is playing really really good. He scored 17 points and dished out 18 (!!!) assists in his last game. Collison will have to play a lot more minutes than he did before Paul went down and he has suddenly become a key player for the Hornets.

 
If we can’t be a contender than let’s go for more lottery balls – that’s a philosophy that many fans hate because obviously everyone wants to see their team win and Hornets certainly shouldn’t give up too fast. They can still sneak into the playoffs even with Paul out for 1 or 2 months.

 
David Stern will have to choose a replacement for Chris for the Western Conference All-Star team roster. Chauncey Billups is the best candidate followed by Aaron Brooks, Monta Ellis and Tyreke Evans. That’s if Stern is choosing a guard to replace Paul which is very likely.

 
Here’s a video which displays how Chris Paul hurt his knee.

 

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Blake Griffin is a very exciting player to watch but unfortunately we will have to wait until next season to witness his first appearance in a real NBA game.

Clippers rookie injured his left knee during the last game of the preseason and at the time team announced that Blake could be out for six weeks. Well, it turned out to be much worse than that.

As the weeks passed, time after time people asked: “Hey, what’s up with Blake? When is he returning?”. It was already January and Griffin still wasn’t playing. I felt that something isn’t alright and I already expected bad news.

He hasn’t recovered from his injury well enough so he will have to undergo a surgery and that means he’s not playing this season. LA Clippers are having a good year and even though they are only 12th in the Western Conference standings their record is 17-20. It’s quite possible that with Blake playing they would have a realistic chance of making the playoffs while now I only give maybe a 20 % chance that two Los Angeles teams will be playing in the postseason. Western Conference is just too competitive right now (11 teams above 0.500 !!!).

However he remains optimistic and doesn’t refer to this injury as season-ending. He says it’s a debut-prolonging injury (kinda funny). Just a few years ago another rookie big man Greg Oden experienced similar problems and he still hasn’t showed the type of game what everyone expected to see from him when he was selected as the number 1 pick in the 2007 NBA draft. Greg also missed his entire rookie season and this year another serious injury struck him and he isn’t playing. I certainly hope that Blake’s return to the court will be more sucessful.

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