MPJ opens up about his back injury

In what is quite possibly the most talked about injury in recent Missouri sports history, the Michael Porter, Jr. back injury is often a point of contention amongst fans. Mostly because so much behind the injury was shrouded in mystery. Mizzou signed the top overall recruit and everything seemed fine until it wasn’t. He checked out of the very first basketball game of the season and within weeks he was having microdiscectomy surgery to fix herniated discs in his back.

Porter came back to play at the end of the season but it wasn’t the same. In between there wasn’t much put out there about exactly how Porter got the point of surgery. In an interview with Marc J. Spears of ESPN, writing for theUndefeated.com, Porter went in:

“I kept playing through junior year, through senior year of high school, just with some nagging back pain. Always tried to go to different chiropractors, always tried to go to different therapists, to help me get it better.”

Porter’s injury woes continued as a freshman at Missouri. Porter said a therapist, whom he declined to name, made his injury worse while at Missouri.

“At Mizzou I kept seeing more chiropractors, and I remember one chiropractor did an adjustment and the pain moved from my back to my hips, and I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ ” Porter said. “And the chiropractor was like, ‘It’s new muscles turning on it.’ And then it stayed with me for like three days, and I noticed my leg getting a little smaller … and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’

“So I tried to jump at practice on my left leg and I couldn’t jump as high. And so that’s when I knew something was really messed up, and that was like the day before our first game against Iowa State. So that was the scariest thing ever.”

This all sounds horrible.

Different chiropractors, different therapists. That’s the beginning of a recipe for a disaster. Then another unnamed therapist made things worse?

Then he goes on to interpret the chiropractor’s description for why his hips started hurting a little incorrectly. As somebody who has had both back problems and been to a chiropractor for help with his back problems, it’s common to have aches and pains in your hips with a back issue. The nervous system tends to connect a lot of those parts.

It’s difficult to parse the words and come away with a clean conclusion. Mizzou isn’t going to comment on the situation to talk about what they had intended to accomplish in treating his injury. You have to wonder how forthcoming the player was with the training staff. Players are known to either downplay or embellish the truth when it comes to injuries. Maybe a Mizzou trainer erred in the diagnosis and treatment of MPJ’s back. We’ll never quite know what the end result would have been if Porter’s back would have been treated correctly from the go.

But it probably would have been a little more fun.

Sophie Cunningham got her first career start for the Mercury

Big moment for Sophie. The night didn’t go so great for her scoring only 2 points and grabbing six rebounds, more importantly the Mercury dropped a tight game to the New York Liberty and fell to 5-6 on the season.

Kash Robertson makes his NBA Summer League Debut

Kash had a good night, in 17 minutes he was 3-4 from the floor including a 3-point make is a solid night. He was also a +13 while on the court. The Hornets are in a pretty severe rebuilding mode so Robertson is in a very good spot if he’s going to find his way onto a roster this season. Still you have to think he’s a bit of a long shot, but maybe a spot on the Hornets G-League team the Greensboro Swarm.

Make this a no-contest blow out: