UPDATE 10:55 pm: This isn’t good (and why you should take what a team tells you about injuries with the salt mentioned below).
Tyson Chandler left the arena on crutches and thinks he has a sprained knee, tweets Frank Isola of the New York Daily News. An MRI on Thursday will determine the extent of the injury.
On the bright side, Carmelo Anthony said he thinks Chandler will be ready for the season opener Nov. 1. Of course, he’s not exactly a doctor.
As mentioned below, the Knicks are thin on the front line due to injuries right now. Amare Stoudemire and Marcus Camby are not expected to be ready for the start of the season, and while Rasheed Wallace isn’t injured he isn’t in shape for big minutes. Which means just like at the Olympics, we could see Carmelo Anthony playing some center.
10:13 pm: The video below is not a great view of what happened, but early in the first quarter of the Knicks preseason game against the Nets, New York center Tyson Chandler banged knees with Gerald Wallace and went down.
He instantly went to the team locker room, and the Knicks said that he would not return to the game due to a “sore knee.” You can decide for yourself what that means. Marc Berman of the New York Post tweets that the Knicks say it is not serious. Probably isn’t. But all team reports on injuries should come with a grain or two of salt.
The Knicks need to hope it isn’t serious. They open the season Nov. 1 (a week from Thursday) against the same Nets in Brooklyn. Chandler’s backup Marcus Camby is still injured and not expected to be ready by then, and Rasheed Wallace just returned to practice with the team a couple of days ago and would not be ready for heavy minutes. All just something to watch and think about as the season nears and as we wait for updates on Chandler.
Hat tip to The Point Forward for the video. The preseason game is being played at the soon-to-be former home of the New York Islanders, the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island.