McDyess to Undergo Surgery

Denver Nuggets’ forward Antonio McDyess will undergo surgery on his left knee Friday after an MRI showed his injury was worse than originally thought.

McDyess, the team’s leading scorer, has not practiced since last Thursday due to pain in his left knee. The MRI revealed a partial tear to his patella tendon and a mild sprain of the medial collateral ligament.

Reuters reports that McDyess began to feel pain in his knee during a recent practice. He missed 10 games late last season for a partially dislocated left kneecap and spent his off-season trying to rehabilitate the injury.

“Friday it is,” McDyess told the Associated Press Tuesday night. “It’s unfortunate because I was really looking forward to this season. It’s going to be a bad feeling watching the guys play. Hopefully, they’ll hold the fort down until I get back.

“I struggled through this last season. I came back and thought I was healthy. It was a freak accident. I went up to slam the ball and came down. My patella tendon is 60 to 70 percent torn. The surgery will be to reattach it to my knee, to the bone. Hopefully, everything will be all right.”

McDyess hopes to return to action by February, though the team did not estimate how long he would be off the court.

“It could be next year,” he said. “I’m going to have it immobilized for 10 days. After that, I’ll start rehabbing. I’m not going to try to rush things, but I’m a fast healer.”

McDyess told the Associated Press that he had three options: “One, I could get cut and reattach the tendon. Two, just clean it out and hope that it would come back on its own. The third was to not even get cut and just see if it healed. But I did that this summer, and it didn’t heal.”