jnrjr79 wrote:Agree to disagree, I guess, but I think there's basically a 0% chance it would have been granted. The prior missed time is basically medically irrelevant. The question really comes down to "does this last surgery have a chance of allowing Lonzo to play again," and the experimental nature of the surgery actually makes it harder to answer that question definitively in the negative.
Here's the relevant section of the CBA:
The determination of whether a player has suffered a
career-ending injury or illness shall be made by a physician selected
jointly by the NBA and the Players Association or, upon agreement
of the NBA and the Players Association, a Fitness-to-Play Panel
established under Article XXII. A player shall be deemed to have
suffered a career-ending injury or illness if it is determined (i) by such
a physician or Fitness-to-Play Panel that the player has an injury or
illness that (x) prevents him from playing skilled professional
basketball at an NBA level for the duration of his career, or
(y) substantially impairs his ability to play skilled professional
basketball at an NBA level and is of such severity that continuing to
play professional basketball at an NBA level would subject the player
to medically unacceptable risk of suffering a life-threatening or
permanently disabling injury or illness, or (ii) by such Fitness-to-Play
Panel that the player has an injury or illness that would create a
materially elevated risk of death, paralysis, or other permanent spinal
injury for the player under the procedures set forth in Article XXII,
Section 11.
Applying this standard, I just don't see how you can take the current state of play (Lonzo has surgery, the anticipated recovery time is a year, and after that, there isn't a lot of history with this particular procedure to let you know if he could return to the NBA) and expect that an independent doctor is going to determine that Lonzo's career is over. But, fast forward to next year, when Lonzo's anticipated rehab time will be over, and it would seem a lot more likely you could make that determination.
I don't know if it would have been granted, but applying last year wouldn't have stopped you from applying again this year.
I would tend to think "anticipated recovery" is somewhat meaningless in this context, as it's never happened in the history of the NBA. There is nothing to say that he will ever be able to return to a pro-athlete level after this procedure, no one has ever done so after this procedure. The fact that he'll recover in a year doesn't really mean anything given that no one has ever recovered from this and played in the NBA.
I don't know that this is an exhaustive list, but it seems pretty well researched:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/k5f8ws/longest_time_off_due_to_injury_in_the_nba/Not a single player has ever missed 2.5 years with the same injury and come back successfully.
Greg Oden (knee) came back and played 23 games one season then retired and basically wasn't an NBA caliber player when he came back but some team hoped he might continue to improve but didn't.
Magic Johnson missed 4 years with HIV, but that's a totally unrelated type of thing.
Roberson, Embiid, and Thompson missed the same amount of time, but both had multiple major injuries during a recovery from their 1st injury not one injury they treated over and over again and those injuries all had defined recovery times that outside of stacking on top of each other players had returned from in the past.
If Lonzo is to come back and be an NBA player, he will be only the 2nd after Oden to miss so much time with a single injury and return at all, and the 1st to ever do so after this procedure.
No idea if that's enough to clear the hurdle of medical retirement. Maybe it wouldn't be. I'm definitely not trying to say they'd have gotten it for sure, but I think the case is stronger than you are giving it credit for. If they were willing to be done with Lonzo, it wouldn't have mattered to try though as they could try again this year.
The reasons against trying last year are:
1: They think he might come back and want him on the roster
2: They want his contract on the books to trade as a cheap deal due to insurance
3: They want the option waive/stretch him this year rather than having to stretch him last year in the case they lose the medical retirement claim and aren't granted relief (not 100%, but I believe if they went for it last year they'd have had to make teh decision to stretch last year)
