Nearly seven months after suffering a season-ending Lisfranc injury in an August Seattle Pro-Am game, Chet Holmgren gained some retrospect and talked about the freak occurrence in his latest YouTube video.
Defending a LeBron James drive, Holmgren landed awkwardly on his right foot on the slippery court and immediately asked out of the game. The game would shortly afterward get called off due to unsafe conditions.
Holmgren notes how he initially didn’t know the injury would be as serious as a season ender, but was concerned with a pop he felt in his foot and immediately called his agent to get medical scanning done.
“We go down and back, down and back three times and then boom — one wrong step and a whole lot changed from there.
There was a tipped pass to a steal or something like that, and LeBron ends up getting the ball. It’s any normal fastbreak. He takes a dribble and then tries to cut across and then finish on the other side. I just remember backpedaling and jumping to contest. LeBron misses the shot. And the ball’s going down the other way. Now it’s like a fastbreak the other way. I’m backing up — at this point, I’m kinda sliding sideways and I tried to go forward. I take like three or four steps and I’m just like, ‘Something just feels weird.’ I thought the air bubble in my shoe popped or something because I’m not feeling any pain right now. I’m telling the coach, ‘Sub me out real quick.’
I’m on to the bench, I take my shoe off and I’m feeling my shoe. (There was) nothing wrong with my shoe. So first thing I do is I hop from the bench down to the little locker room area I’m down there trying to walk on my foot and it’s just not what it’s supposed to be.
At this point, I’m calling my agent and I’m like, ‘It’s not good. I got to go to the hospital right now and get images and see what this is.’
I’ve never been injured in my life (and) never missed more than a week of basketball with any injury in my entire life. I didn’t know what it could be (or) what this means. I was just down there.
Looking back now, call me crazy for playing defense in a Pro-Am game I guess, but that’s just kinda who I am — competing and playing basketball the right way.
I believe if you’re going to (B.S.) the game (then) there’s no point in going out and playing at all. If I could redo the play, I’d do it exactly the same. I play defense how I normally would throughout my entire life. I’ve taken — who knows how many millions of steps — in my basketball career and I guess I just took one wrong one (that) didn’t turn out in my favor.”
Chet Holmgren talking about the injury he had at the Crawsover this Summer
“I thought the airbubble in my shoe popped or something” pic.twitter.com/UBNqfcP2xL
— TF (@ThunderFocus) March 4, 2023
The full video can be watched below with highlights from his summer scrummages that featured him going 1-on-1 against greats like Kevin Durant, who’s a known huge fan of Holmgren.
