news-engine

Glen ‘Big Baby’ Davis claims that the Los Angeles Clippers failed to diagnose him properly, that he had a broken foot during his final NBA season, and that mistake, he believes, ultimately cost him four more years in the league and approximately $30 million. Speaking on the TFU podcast, Davis detailed what happened during the Clippers’ 2015 playoff run. “They shot me up with Toradol every game in the playoffs when I broke it. I didn’t know it was broken. If I knew it was broken, I wouldn’t have f***ing even tried to shoot it up. I would have been like, ‘I’m done. I’m about to get surgery. But I played through it. We lost, and after that, they didn’t give me an exam. They didn’t examine me or check on me. It was like, ‘You’re out of here.'” “I found out that September, the following summer, that my foot was broken. Now I can’t get on a team. I can’t go anywhere. The Spurs want me to come. I can’t come because my ankle’s broken. They didn’t tell me. If they would have told me, I could have gotten surgery. I left there, they gave me the X-rays, the Clippers were like, ‘Oh, they didn’t see anything.’ But when I went to my doctor, they were like, ‘Your foot’s broken.’ I was like, ‘What? I thought I just had a bad ankle.'” “That’s when Doc was like, ‘I’m sorry for you, man.’ He didn’t say, ‘Get well,’ or, ‘You can come train here and get yourself back, and I can get you on a G League team. Work your way up. Come play again.’ It was nothing. It was just silence.” Davis injured his ankle during Game 6 of the Los Angeles Clippers’ first-round series against the San Antonio Spurs, but returned for Game 7 and continued playing in the second round against the Houston Rockets. And according to Davis, he was repeatedly given Toradol to manage the pain without knowing the injury was actually a fracture. The injury was particularly damaging because Davis was entering free agency. He said he didn’t discover that his foot was broken until September, long after the Clippers’ season had ended. And according to him, the San Antonio Spurs were interested in bringing him in, but this late diagnosis prevented him from going after that opportunity. Had that fracture been discovered immediately, Davis thinks he could have undergone surgery months earlier and completed a lengthy recovery process before attempting his comeback. He did undergo surgery that offseason to address the foot and ankle issues, but he never played another NBA game. He was only 29 when his NBA career ended. He spent eight seasons with the Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic, and Clippers, and he also won the 2008 NBA championship with the Celtics. Davis estimates the situation cost him another four NBA seasons and $30 million in earnings. He also remembers getting very little encouragement from then-Clippers coach Doc Rivers after learning the severity of his injury.