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On Tuesday, while on a press tour for his upcoming book, a memoir, “The Sixth Man,” Andre Iguodala went on The Breakfast Club for a roughly hour-long interview and at one point said that he had a fractured leg in the 2018 playoffs which was termed a “bone bruise” by the Warriors. Iguodala’s implication was that he was having trouble wrestling with the fact that his health was called into question and there was some question as to whether the injury was actually a bone bruise or a fracture:
Last year, it happened to me. I missed last three games of the Houston series. It goes to Game 7. We barely get out of that series. And now they’re looking at me like, “When are you coming back?” And I had a fractured leg. But it’s being put out there like, “You’ve got a bone bruise.” I’m like, “Nah, it’s fractured.” So, I’m fighting with the team. I’m fighting with people. I’m fighting with the media. And then my teammates ask me every day, “How you feeling? How you feeling?”
So, with K, he’s getting it from everywhere, too.
On Wednesday, Iguodala addressed the confusion, which led to headlines and pieces that called into question whether the Warriors had misdiagnosed and/or lied about Iguodala’s injury, and therefore did the same with Durant’s injury. Iguodala said the confusion came over the fact that a bone bruise and a fracture where he had picked up the injury were similar in terms of prognosis:
“I had it in my fifth year. It’s a certain part of the leg, where, essentially, it’s so fine of a line of what it could be. Like I said, we were all on the same page that I was putting myself in no harm and going back out there and playing… the team didn’t put me in no harm,” Iguodala said. “There wasn’t an argument about it, there wasn’t a fight about it. It’s just like a grade two versus a grade three sprain, it’s like alright, you’re talking like a two-day difference in terms of recovery.”
Iguodala broke down the entire situation, reaffirming his trust in the Warriors’ training staff and the fact that professional athletes often judge on their level of sacrifice:
The different roles that can affect the mind of an athlete outside of the game… I always say this, ‘We have the best training staff in the league.’ When we’re listening to things and we’re seeing one line from an entire conversation, it’s always going to get taken out of context. My whole thing was it’s tough for the athlete when you’re injured and you’re getting questions from everybody that’s outside of your team.
Historically, what do we say about athletes? Those who play through injuries and those who fight for their team and sacrifice, that’s the epitome of a champion, correct? That’s the stigma that’s been built. Until you see a superstar or someone who brings so much revenue like Kevin Durant, now, all of a sudden, it changes, well should he have been out there.
The point I was making, my situation was, when you have an MRI, you can have six different eyes look at it and have six different interpretations of what you see. And what wasn’t expressed, and maybe I expressed it a little bit better, was we all were under the agreement that I wasn’t putting myself in danger by going back out there.
I’ve played through injuries, so I wanted to play. I wanted to play. And the team was like, this is what we think it is. For me, I didn’t feel like I was endangering the team, I didn’t feel like I was in danger. So we were on the same page in terms of, I was capable of going out there and performing and I did that and we won a championship.
When Iguodala’s quotes on Tuesday’s were used, they connected his experience to a thesis that the Warriors misdiagnosed Durant and rushed him back, something that Iguodala categorically denied:
“My whole thinking that whole time was that, I don’t think that Kevin was pressured to play; not from his teammates, not from coaching staff, not from training staff and definitely not from ownership,” Iguodala said. “And I didn’t think one had to do with the other. Now, we can go and fight that all day long, but we had so many eyes on that, and all agreed that the calf [injury] would not turn into an Achilles injury. I said this on air, it was just an act of god and hey, this is just how it’s supposed to be, and you’ve gotta sit down for a while.”
Listen to Iguodala’s full interview on KNBR 680 below:
