Knicks’ Miles McBride describes sports hernia surgery: ‘A painful tweak’
Imagine someone stabbing your groin, hip and abdominal area all at the same time. Now, imagine you’ve gotten surgery, returned to work as a professional basketball player, then aggravated your wound on your first day back on the job. Welcome to life as Miles McBride , whose sports hernia sustained in late January required a core-muscle surgical procedure, rendering him sidelined for two months of action.
And when McBride returned to the court for a March 29 matchup against the Oklahoma City Thunder and dove for a loose ball, only to come up grimacing and leave the game for good, he didn’t need more than a day to recover in time for the Knicks ’ March 31 matchup against the Houston Rockets. McBride chalked the pain, the incident, the scary exit to being part of a process he hopes can help put the surgical procedure in the past. “It’s a tweak, and it’s a painful tweak.
It’s not necessarily as bad, it’s just sometimes you can’t do anything about it,” he said. Asked to explain the injury to those who’d never experienced it, McBride let out a sigh and laughed: “It’s like someone stabbing your groin, hip and ab at the same time. It’s not fun, but I’ll get back right.
” The surgery, he said, successfully tightened the core area he hurt on March 27 against the Sacramento Kings. Diving for 50-50 balls, making hustle plays, or even defending with physicality and force can jar things loose once again. McBride said he and the medical team were prepared for an aggravation.
“It’s really just a part of the recovery process,” he said. “Basically everything was tightened, and now I’m back to moving around, so it’s just part of it. ” McBride was in the middle of a breakout season with averages of 12.