Houston Rockets forward Kevin Durant, left, and guard Fred Vanvleet watch during Houston Rockets practice at UCLA before heading out to Los Angeles to take on the Lakers for Game 5 on Wednesday, April 29, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Houston Rockets guard Fred Vanvleet (5) sits on the bench before the Rockets take on the LA Clippers at the Toyota Center in Houston on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026.
Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle
Fred VanVleet usually doesn’t reveal too much outside of basketball X’s and O’s when he’s speaking into a microphone or a reporter’s recorder, even when he’s talked about the physical and emotional pain of missing all of last season with a torn ACL.
However, the Houston Rockets point guard opened up more about the situation when he chatted with former Rockets guard Patrick Beverley on the latest episode of VanVleet’s “Unguarded” podcast, which dropped Friday.
VanVleet tore his ACL and meniscus when he was working out with teammates on a team retreat in the Bahamas about a week before the start of training camp. When VanVleet faced the media a month later to talk about the injury and surgery, he seemed to have accepted his fate with a determination to return better than ever. However, on his podcast, VanVleet revealed he actually spent days in complete denial of the injury altogether.
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The 32-year-old said when he injured the knee he was having a great scrimmage showing the young guys that they might have blockbuster trade acquisition Kevin Durant to lean on now, but “we’re gonna need him in April, May and June. Y’all still go me. So, I’m going crazy (on the court),” VanVleet said of his workout that day.
Then, VanVleet drove the lane and felt his knee give out, which he described as “a shotgun blow.”
He said the entire gym went quiet with the music even being turned off before he got up and tried to walk it off, limping around the court.
“I’m walking around like, ‘Damn, I f— my s— up,’” VanVleet recalls. “But it’s September, so I’m already going like, ‘Alright, bet, maybe two, three weeks, I’ll probably miss the first preseason game and I’ll be cool.’”
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VanVleet said he went to his room to take a nap and when he woke up, his knee had swollen “as big as a basketball.”
When the swelling went down after a couple days, VanVleet was able to get an MRI, and when those results delivered bad news, he still was convinced someone had messed up and the doctors were looking at the wrong MRI scans.
“I said, ‘No, that ain’t mine. No. I didn’t (tear my ACL).’ They’re like, ‘You did, bruh. You tore your ACL,’” VanVleet said. “I said no, so I’m arguing. I did that for like three days.”
VanVleet said he had so thoroughly convinced himself that he didn’t actually tear his ACL that when he was supposed to meet the doctor at the gym the next morning, he actually showed up at 2 a.m. to run and shoot and ended up spending the night at the facility before his doctor’s appointment.
“I’m f— up, crying and s—,” VanVleet said. “I slept at the gym.”
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Even when the doctors assured VanVleet that the images were accurate and they had been sent around to other experts for confirmation, VanVleet said he told them, “What I feel right now, I feel like I could play in 10 days, I’m telling you. I’ve played through s— like this. They’re like, ‘Nah. You need to get surgery.’”
Throughout the season there was some speculation — and perhaps sheerly overly optimistic hope — that VanVleet could return by the end of the regular season and contribute in the playoffs. That never happened but VanVleet said he was thinking that way, too, and it helped him with his recovery.
“The whole season, I’m like, ‘I’m coming back,’ but man, I wasn’t anywhere near coming back,” VanVleet said. “But I needed that to get through this s—.”
Beverley, who has a new podcast of his own, said when he heard the news, he was particularly hurt, because he had been working out with a lot of the Rockets over the summer, including a run on the court with them just a week before VanVleet’s injury, and had high expectations for a team that eventually would suffer another first-round playoff exit without VanVleet on the court.
“I was thinking, I just left working out with the Rockets, they just got KD, man, they’re about to be tough,” said Beverley, noting he was impressed with how many Rockets players were spending so much time in the gym together.
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VanVleet, who just finished his 10th year in the NBA after going undrafted out of Wichita State, said he’ll be back with a “chip on my shoulder.”
“Like anything else, just more challenges, more s— to work through, make the story better,” VanVleet said. “S—, you know, I got another 10 in me, so we’re going to see, we’re going to get back to it.”