Dr. Gerhardt says Grade 1 pelvic muscle strains my have saved his hip from completely dislocating.
Article Link: Ja Morant injury update latest: Specialist on Grizzlies star’s hip
The superstar point guard is listed as week-to-week while dealing with right hip subluxation and pelvic muscle strains. Morant is still using crutches while he’s with the team on the current three-game road trip.
On Tuesday, coach Taylor Jenkins said Morant is doing better, but he’s currently offloading, which essentially means no basketball activity that would put strain on his hip.
The Commercial Appeal spoke with Michael Gerhardt, a sports medicine specialist and orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, for more insight on Morant’s injury. He has also served as a team physician for the US Soccer Men’s National Team and Los Angeles Galaxy of the MLS for more than 20 years.
Gerhardt described the hip as a “very stable joint.” It takes a lot of force to cause a hip subluxation, and that’s what happened when Morant jumped for an alley-oop pass and came down hard on his right side before leaving a Nov. 6 game against the Los Angeles Lakers.
The force of the fall caused Morant’s hip to partially dislocate out of the ball of the socket. It was a subluxation and not deemed a dislocation since the ball slid back in on its own.
“That being said, it’s still very painful,” Gerhardt said. “A lot of ligaments and things can get stretched in that area and can create problems in there, even though it wasn’t a full dislocation.”
Morant’s injury is not one that is common in sports. A hip subluxation may be more occasional in a sport as physical as football, but it’s even more rare on the hardwood.
“It’s more common in high velocity accidents like motor vehicle accidents,” Gerhardt said. “Things where there’s high velocity forces involved that cause the hip to slide out of the back and dislocate.”
