Amare Stoudemire: Knee injury likely to cause surgery

Amare Stoudemire

In a story that caught most fantasy owners completely off guard, it was reported late on Friday that Amare Stoudemire has a knee injury that may cause him to have arthrosopic surgery before the season begins. The knee had been "troublesome" all summer, but yesterday it got worse.

Reportedly, Amare hobbled through the morning practice on Friday, and then skipped the later session to meet with Dr. Tom Carter, the team's head physician and a renowned orthopedic surgeon who specializes in knee problems. This sounds to me a lot like a pitcher going to have a visit with Dr. James Andrews, and that is not good.

Steve Nash hinted at the possible extent of the injury on Friday night, saying, "In an ideal world, if Amare is only out for a month, it might be good for us to get some of these guys to understand the system and play together and get some minutes and rest Amare's legs."

There's a silver lining in everything, I guess, but for fantasy owners, the news that only a month is the ideal situation is bad news, indeed.

During his rookie season, teammate Shawn Marion had surgery to clean out cartilage in his knee and missed 31 games. That's the downside here, and such a recovery time would cut seriously into Amare's productivity this season. Amare makes his money with his explosive dunking ability, and even upon his return, a lingering knee problem doesn't bode well for his game (remember Vince Carter's "jumper's knee"?).

Amare is the consensus first overall center in fantasy drafts this year, and many draft boards have him going as high as #3 overall, behind only LBJ and KG. We will have to keep an eye on this situation, but needless to say, this should probably move Amare down a little bit on all boards.