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Victor Wembanyama is on track to return and rejoin a promising core of Spurs talent.<\/p>\n
San Antonio Spurs star Victor Wembanyama expects to play this coming season and has been fully cleared after\u00a0dealing with deep vein thrombosis\u00a0in his shoulder for the past few months, he told the French newspaper L\u2019Equipe in remarks published Monday.<\/p>\n
A person familiar with the situation later told The Associated Press that the Spurs have indeed received word that Wembanyama has been cleared to resume play and, barring anything unforeseen, will be able to fully participate in training camp when it opens this fall. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the team has not revealed that detail publicly.<\/p>\n
It has been expected that the team anticipated\u00a0Wembanyama would be able to start this coming season, though there was no official word until now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m officially cleared to return. \u2026 I\u2019ll finally be able to play a bit of basketball again,\u201d Wembanyama told the French sports daily.<\/p>\n
The fact that Wembanyama has been cleared suggests that his type of DVT was provoked, which would rule out a genetic predisposition to a clot returning. The Spurs have not disclosed specifics of Wembanyama\u2019s shoulder issue, but there is a type of DVT that appears when a blood vessel in someone\u2019s upper arm can be compressed by a rib (the top rib is removed in some cases to relieve the compression, if that is the cause) or a muscle. Such issues have proven to be treatable in the past.<\/p>\n
Many other athletes have dealt with similar issues. Serena Williams came back to dominate women\u2019s tennis after a clotting issue following the birth of her daughter; Williams needed four surgeries to address the matter. Basketball Hall of Famer Chris Bosh had to eventually retire from the NBA after he was diagnosed with multiple clots. In hockey, Tomas Fleischmann developed clots and went on to play for years afterward; Tomas Vokoun needed surgery to relieve his clotting problem and never played in the NHL again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was afraid of not being able to play basketball anymore,\u201d Wembanyama said in the interview. \u201cI think that we all have thoughts sometimes. Irrational thoughts about the things we care about most. But this type of thinking also changes you as a person, for the better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wembanyama was the league\u2019s rookie of the year two years ago, Spurs guard Stephon Castle won that same trophy this past season, and the team has added another high pick \u2014 this year\u2019s No. 2 selection, Dylan Harper \u2014 to a super-promising young core. Wembanyama was the front-runner to be defensive player of the year last season when he was diagnosed with the blood clot in his right shoulder in February.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy injury was an adventure, obviously, but the hardest part is over,\u201d he told L\u2019Equipe. \u201cI\u2019m much better today, physically and mentally.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wembanyama was averaging 24.3 points, 11 rebounds, 3.8 blocks and 3.7 assists per game when he was shut down in February; the only other player in NBA history to finish a season averaging all that was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975-76.<\/p>\n
There will be an obvious ramping-up period before Wembanyama is playing at full speed again, though there is plenty of time between now and training camp for him to get back to that level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to continue specific work on my shoulder and especially get back into everything related to my basketball habits,\u201d Wembanyama said in the interview. \u201cIt\u2019s been five months since I\u2019ve played a 5-on-5 match. If I had to have a game tomorrow, it would be risky. There are plenty of reflexes to find, both conscious and linked to muscle memory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wembanyama has traveled extensively in recent months and spent time last month\u00a0at a Shaolin temple in Zhengzhou, China. The temple is a place that welcomes visitors who wish to study Chan meditation, Shaolin Kung Fu, traditional Chinese medicine and more.<\/p>\n
Wembanyama told L\u2019Equipe that he studied kung fu and Buddhism during his stay there, but added that he does not identify as Buddhist.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were initiated there to the life of a warrior monk, which combines Buddhism and intensive kung fu practice,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was very hard. We discovered movements that we had never done in our lives. It was more than 1,000 kicks to do per day, jumps, balance exercises, stretching. \u2026 We used muscles that we rarely used and which were quickly overloaded. I had some of the biggest aches and pains of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama is on track to return and rejoin a promising core of Spurs talent. San Antonio Spurs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11978,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99,11845],"class_list":["post-11977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-victor-wembanyama-return-blood-clot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11977\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}