It’s just not the same without Steven Adams. Even since he first got injured diving for a loose ball late in a game back in January, the NBA has been missing its heartbeat. Last season’s Quotable Steve article was only half its usual length after the people were deprived of their Funaki fix. The Memphis Grizzlies capitulated without him. The New Zealand national team was forced to deal with his absence as well. It had been strongly rumoured that he was finally ready to represent the Tall Blacks under the coaching of the matua Pero Cameron with the FIBA World Cup taking place. Alas, the bung knee meant it was not to be.

Now, having braved a path through six months of emptiness... there’s whole other year of it coming.

Adams spent months and months rehabbing his knee. The Grizzlies had him on a specific regime all offseason. He then turned up for media day talking like he had an expectation of playing (an expectation which sounded much more emphatic from the point of view of those around him, to be fair, with Steve-o taking things very much day to day in his recovery). Adams did manage to get out there for a couple of preseason games and he looked sharp despite the Memphis Grizzlies taking a cautious approach with his minutes. But something must not have responded properly because right on the verge of the new campaign, with Funaki’s return to basketball finally imminent... the team announced he’d be having season-ending surgery instead.

This whole situation has been extremely weird. The journey of this injury has been peppered with confusion and a lack of information. Once upon a time he was given a 3-5 week timeframe for a possible return and instead it’s going to end up being 18 months. That fact alone is enough to get you scratching your head and wondering what the hell happened. So... what the hell happened?

TIMELINE OF THE STEVEN ADAMS “PCL SPRAIN”

22 January 2023 – The origin point. It was the final play of a two-point loss to the Phoenix Suns and the Grizz were pressing for a turnover... a turnover that they very nearly got as Adams dove for a loose ball and threw it back inbounds only for the Suns to regather. Adams landed hard on his right kneecap and was slow to get back up. This was the record-scratch moment. This was the point in history that you’d go back and fix if only you had a time machine. The the rupturing of the path of fate.

24 January 2023 - An update from the Memphis Grizzlies PR unit: “Memphis Grizzlies center Steven Adams has been diagnosed with a PCL sprain in his right knee, which was sustained during the January 22 game against the Phoenix Suns. Adams is expected to be sidelined for 3-5 weeks. Further updates will be provided as appropriate.”

15 February 2023 – Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins: “Steve-O is getting back, hopefully in the next week or two. He’s starting to do more on the court. Follow ups with the doctors have gone well but we don’t have an update on the timeline other than what we initially put out.”

26 February 2023 – Nothing happened. This was exactly five weeks after the injury, matching the return timeframe that the team had initially given. But there was no update and Adams remained sidelined.

6 March 2023 – Still no further update, but Adams by now had gotten into some tentative 5v5 stuff in training and his head coach did not rule out the possibility of him making his return within a few more weeks. Taylor Jenkins: “It could be at the end of this road trip, but it has the potential to be a little bit longer than that.”

10 March 2023 – The following medical update was provided by Memphis Grizzlies PR: “Following a recent reevaluation, Memphis Grizzlies center Steven Adams underwent a stem cell injection yesterday as he continues his recovery from a PCL sprain in his right knee. Adams will be reevaluated in approximately four weeks.”

12 April 2023 – A very strangely-worded update from Coach Jenkins, with pervading passive voice, announces that: “Yeah I mean it’s pretty confirmed that he’s most likely out for the playoffs”. The formal update a month earlier had been the only proper news since the initial “3-5 week” injury so needless to say there was much confusion, with Jenkins’s wishy-washy words not helping matters. Jenkins added: “We don’t have definitive words on what the next steps are. It’s been an ongoing process the last couple of weeks. I think there’s more dialogue still this week with doctors involved.” He did confirm that it was the same injury though, his recovery just wasn’t progressing as hoped.

28 April 2023 – The Grizzlies lost game six against the LA Lakers to be eliminated in the first round of the playoffs and, sure enough, Steven Adams still had not made a comeback. In fact he wasn’t even with the team for that game six defeat in LA, despite having regularly travelled with them to support from the sidelines (and presumably also to continue his rehab with the team staff).

1 May 2023 – Adams not being with the team when they were eliminated meant he also did not do an exit interview. However his team’s general manager Zach Kleiman did and he had this to say about Adams, providing the first genuinely new information on the situation for nearly two months: “The plan for Steven is a rehab plan in place that Steven’s going to be diving into. The target for Steven is to return at the beginning of next season. That’s the hope for everyone going into this offseason. To clarify on Steven, the approach is non-surgical. Not a procedure, just a dedicated rehab plan that we’re putting in place with the target being that Steven will return at or around the beginning of next season.”

3 October 2023 – Fast forward through that offseason and now Media Day has rolled around, with Adams there to speak about his optimism ahead of the new term while also trying to limit expectations. His perspective was that he’d had a good offseason diligently following his rehab plan but that he was keeping it one day at a time: “It would be irresponsible for me to say that I'll be ready to go right now. Because, again bro, the build up is important. I thought we had a successful offseason, so now I think we're in a really good spot to, like, ramp up. But it's only going to be day by day.” However his GM Kleiman was more positive: “Steven is in a good spot. Steven’s cleared for live play here in camp. We will be conservative ramping him up. Any time you have a case where he literally hasn’t played we’re gonna be cautious and take it one step at a time but Steven’s cleared and in a good place.”

5 October 2023 – Grizzlies got back into training camp mode and, for the first time since the injury, Steven Adams participated fully in 5v5 practice. Teammate Luke Kennard said he “looked great”, although his coach did stress caution.

6 October 2023 – A post-training media spot: “It feels alright bro. Feels good. Held up. Scrimmages have been all good”. Granted, he did reiterate the idea that this was still: “day to day. You don’t wanna lock anything in. There’s a few more days between now and [the first game of preseason]. Just have to manage it.”

9 October 2023 – The first game of preseason took place with Steven Adams in the starting line-up as the Grizzlies beat the Pacers in overtime. He played 12 minutes with 4 points, 5 rebounds, and 1 block.

13 October 2023 - Steve-o sat out the next game as they continued to manage his build-up. But game three of preseason was against the Atlanta Hawks and this time he started and got 15 minutes under his belt. 5 points, 5 rebounds and a block, a steal, and an assist. He wouldn’t play in either of their remaining preseason games but he did look like his old self in the 27 minutes combined that he was out there for.

23 October 2023 – Memphis Grizzlies PR: “Grizzlies Centre Stephen Adams will undergo season-ending surgery on his right posterior cruciate ligament, after non-operative rehabilitation did not resolve ongoing knee instability. Adams is expected to make a full recover ahead of next season.”

9 November 2023 – The actual surgery takes place. Must’ve been a bit of a waiting list, even for an NBA player. Either that or he’d had some mad swelling from his aborted preseason efforts. But November 9 is the date to set the comeback clock from. Just a casual nine and a half months after the original injury occurred.

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Supposing you want the short version, this would be that: Steven Adams recently had surgery on an injury that his team said would be fine with a non-surgical approach and it took them most of the year to realise that this in fact it would not be the case.

How is this even possible? Well, knees are tricky little bastards once they get damaged. Everybody responds differently. Adams appeared to be on track but it also sounds like he was behind where they thought he would be with each check-up. Not sure what the circumstances were around the sudden reversal towards surgery - doubtful we’ll ever find out considering how unforthcoming the Grizzlies organisation has been throughout this entire ordeal - but you can safely assume that Adams was not going to be able to play NBA basketball at the required physical level without surgery since this is how it went down.

Of course, he could have just had the surgery in February and potentially had himself in line for a mid-season return... and that’s where thoughts of potential mismanagement come into the picture. The Memphis Grizzlies are known for having one of the very best medical teams in the NBA, meaning they have one of the very best medical teams in all of sports. This makes you think otherwise. There have been rumours that perhaps the injury was misdiagnosed to begin with and, given the initial 3-5 week expectation and what’s happened since, it’s hard to even doubt that now. It’s more a matter of wondering how long it took until they got back on track.

There were seven weeks in between the date of the injury and the second update which mentioned “reevaluation” and “stem cell injection”. It has since been reported that Adams went to Los Angeles to seek out a second opinion early in the year... was that the re-evaluation that led to the extended time-frame? It’s common practice for players to do that kinda thing. Less common for it to undermine their team with a completely different diagnosis, if indeed that’s what happened. This is probably being way too speculative... but when there’s so little information in the public sphere that’s what happens.

Might also be worth noting that the Grizz recently swapped medical allegiances to a different private clinic that’s not their on-staff medical team, more of a commercial partner that they use for the big stuff like, for example, surgeries. That switch happened during the offseason... in other words after the initial non-surgical plan and before the actual surgery. Fact is, we don’t know the details. We only know that there are at least two significant points of confusion about all this: the initial diagnosis, and the belated decision to undergo surgery. And regardless of how it happened, it’s not going to get him back on a basketball court any sooner. Ah well.

However there is one other aspect of all this that needs clarifying and in this case the evidence exists to prove it. Because this really has been an anomaly in the career of Funaki. There have been a few folks talking about Adams being injury-prone (after you turn 30, any injury is considered career threatening for some weird reason)... but it’s hard to justify that once you dig a little deeper. This is the same injury as before. It’s one singular injury that has possibly been misdiagnosed and possibly had some setbacks and which is going to cost him a season and a half of basketball. But it’s only one injury. And one which he is expected to make a full recovery from.

Throughout his career, Adams has often picked up small knocks due to the way that he plays the game but those are the types of knocks - bruises and rolled ankles and the occasional concussion protocol - which only keep you out of the line-up for a couple of games at most. He’s never actually played every game in a single season... but he’s been remarkably durable all things considered.

Prior to this PCL injury, he’d played nine and a half seasons in the NBA and only twice had an injury absence of five or more games. In February 2015 he fractured a finger that needed surgery and missed 11 games for the Oklahoma City Thunder. Late in his lone season with the New Orleans Pelicans he suffered a toe injury which saw him miss four games, return for one, then get shut down for the remaining six with the team out of the playoff race by then (and, as we later found out, preparing to sack Stan van Gundy and trade Steven Adams). There are only two other instances of him missing four games at a time and both of those were because of covid protocols rather than physical injuries.

If all things go to plan and he’s back for game one of the 2024-25 season then he will have missed 118 consecutive regular season games plus at least six playoff games – given how poorly the Grizz are tracking without him at the moment it seems unlikely they’ll make the playoffs this season. In his entire career prior to this injury he had played 706 out of a possible 764 regular season games and 66 out of a possible 72 playoff games. 58 regular season games missed, 6 playoff games missed. That’s 92.4% and 91.7% availability.

Keep in mind that not all of those games he missed were due to injuries either. One of his covid stints came during the playoffs his first season in Memphis, plus he got benched for match-up reasons in that same postseason (only missing one game entirely for that, though he played minimal minutes in a couple others). The only other playoff game he’s ever missed was a DNP-Coach’s Decision in game three of the Thunder vs Grizzlies series way back in 2014 when he was a rookie coming off the bench. He had never missed a playoff game because of injury until last season.

Does that sound like an injury prone player to you? Zero playoff games missed due to injury in a decade in the league? Playing as a centre? With 92% availability in regular season games at the same time? Yeah nah not really. There’s plenty of confusion surrounding how this current injury has been dealt with but there’s no confusion about this.

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