Kobe: Left achilles
Rudy Gay: left achilles
Cousins: Left achilles
Wes Matthews: Left achilles
Elton Brand: Left achilles
Memet Okur: Left achilles
Chauncey Billups: Left achilles
Brandon Jennings: Left achilles
Anderson Varajao: Left achilles
Leonard: Left achilles
All really struggled to come back and weren’t 100%
Wilkins: right achilles, better than pre injury
Durant: right achilles TBD
All the players who had their careers ended were right handed and tore their left achilles. Durant is right handed and tore his right achilles. Brand and Kobe both had to either jump off their off foot or both feet post injury. Since Durant jumps off his left foot and that achilles is fine, he won’t have this issue.
I was actually just googling this and found this little tidbit on the realgm forum from user "lolathon 234". I’ll leave this here. I can’t say I disagree with his take.
"Kevin Durant tore his right achilles, not the left. Right handed players are left foot dominant with it being significantly stronger due to more frequent usage. They leap off of their left foot(i.e. jump with left foot for right handed layups/dunks) and they use it to accelerate on 90% of their drives(left foot is used for pushing off/generating momentum when driving right). A right handed player’s first step is almost entirely reliant upon their left foot.
All of the horrific career altering injuries you’ve heard about?
Kobe, Brand, Gay, Cousins, Ewing, Matthews, Varejao, Billups, V. Leonard.
All right handed players. All tore their LEFT achilles. None of them were able to regain their explosiveness or first step because the achilles tear rendered their once dominant left-leg, which they’d relied upon throughout their basketball careers, weaker than the right.
And once compromised, trying to use the other in it’s place is akin to learning to write with your opposite hand, it’s impossible.
Why do you think Durant was able to walk off the court with minimal help while all of those other players struggled to even stand?(shout out to Kobe tho, shooting those free-throws was pretty damn herculean in retrospect)
But don’t take my word for it, just read quotes about Kobe post-injury
Bryant was clearly a very different player during his short-lived stint in December. Beyond the evident drop in numbers, he avoided going airborne—even when he did, he mainly launched off and landed on his healthy right foot. His agility and speed were impaired as well
Or what Elton Brand said himself
It was 50, 60, maybe 70 percent healthy," he said, "It was good enough, though. I couldn’t do a lot of the one-leg stuff, so I jumped off of two legs. I could do a lot of things on the court that weren’t too detrimental to the game or the team. It didn’t bring the level of my play down too much, I didn’t think. I had to make adjustments. It’s going to hurt your game a little bit, not being able to drive off that leg, and you lose some explosiveness, and that’s what it’s all about in the NBA."
The players that have made 100% recoveries from an achilles injury with no decline in level of play?
Dominique Wilkins, Jerebko and Darrell Arthur.
All RIGHT handed players. All tore their RIGHT achilles.
But this phenomena isn’t limited to basketball.
Virtually every professional athlete that has come back at 100% from a ruptured achilles has had 1 thing in common: Howie Kendrick, DeMaryius Thomas, Zach Britton, Jason Peters, Derrick Johnson(1st time, 2nd when he ruined his career it was the left), Michael Crabtree, Brent Grimes, Dan Marino, Terrell Suggs, Lawrence Taylor, Vince Wilfork.
Every single one of them tore their RIGHT achilles tendon. I’m not sure if there’s been one single case of someone successfully coming back 100% after tearing their left, whereas there has been significant evidence that tearing the non-dominant Achilles has had negligible impact on performance/career trajectory outside of time missed during rehabilitation. As a matter of fact, almost every single elite athlete that has torn their right achilles while they were still in or near their prime has come back even stronger the following season.
The reason for this likely has to do with the alternate hemispheres of the brain controlling the opposite regions of the body, the left hemisphere controls the right side and the right controls the left. And given the right side of the brain happens to be far more susceptible to trauma that impairs mobility, such as seen in stroke victims, it’s likely the injury itself damages muscle memory. This would explain why the vast majority of players that suffered left achilles injuries weren’t able to regain the strength in their once dominant, left calves with rehab/weight training after the injury and atrophy had taken place.
Additionally, the return timetable for an achilles tear is MUCH shorter than what the media has speculated. Despite proclaiming Durant will miss the entire 2020 season, in reality, return to professional sport after a complete rupture of the AT typically ranges from 3-10 months with a median of 6.9. And Durant’s frame and age will only shorten that process as both low BMI and youth(35>) have correlated with an expedited rehabillitation process. For example, Matthews, Gay, Kobe, Brand, and Billups were all back in 8 months or less and their injuries were far more severe than Durant’s as they’d injured the limb they’d previously relied upon for explosiveness as a player.
All in all, Durant will likely be back sometime around the all star break next season, Feb 15, and should be near 100% by seasons end."
