Seidel: Jennings' youth lends hope he'll return from injury

For 15 amazing games, we saw everything Brandon Jennings could be for the Pistons.

We saw him score and drive and dish at an astonishing level. Twenty-four points and 21 assists against Orlando? Incredible. But most of all, we saw him lead. Here was a young general who found his power and voice, and he led the Pistons to 12 wins.

Suddenly, this team was fun and energetic. Seeing their style of play advance was like watching a colt stand in a barn, wobbling all over, until it started to walk ... then trot ... then gallop — in a matter of days.

On the bench, coach Stan Van Gundy looked like a magician in a suit, but no tie of course. Poof! A puff of smoke went up — now you see Josh Smith, now you don't — and this team got better instantly, thanks to the magic of addition by subtraction. Every night seemed to be a new learning experience for the Pistons. This team learned to come from behind. It learned to hold a lead. It learned to bounce back after an emotional loss. And there was a reason to watch the Pistons again, in large part, because of Jennings.

Then something horrible happened Saturday night in Milwaukee. Jennings was down on the court, writhing in pain, after suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon, which ended his season. What a tragedy.

You have to feel for this young point guard, who was playing the best basketball of his career.

Will he ever return to that level? The odds are against him, according to a 2013 study published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine. The study looked at 18 NBA players who had suffered an Achilles tendon injury over a 23-year period (1988-2011) and it found:

■Seven players were not able to return to the NBA.

■Only 44% returned to play for longer than one season.

■Most of players who returned performed at a lower level.

■Only one player increased his minutes played after his surgery.

■All remaining players had significant decreases in minutes played.

Similar results have been found in the NFL. A 2010 study reviewed the careers of NFL players who suffered a ruptured Achilles tendon between 1997 and 2002. Only about two-thirds of players returned to the field, and the vast majority experienced a decrease in productivity.

All of which sounds bleak for a young point guard under contract for one more season.

But there is a glimmer of hope.

The NBA study had a small sample size, and Jennings is only 25, which is young, in comparison, for this injury. In the NBA study, the average age at the time of surgery was 29.7 years. So he will have a better shot at recovery and to return to form because of his youth, according to Dr. Brian Rill, interim division head of sports medicine at Henry Ford Hospital.

"I think he's got a favorable chance to come back, but it's certainly not a slam dunk," said Rill, a surgeon who has performed about 50 of these surgeries. "I think it's going to be a six- to nine-month process. He is different than Kobe Bryant; he was 34 when he ruptured his. And Isiah Thomas was in his 30s."

The surgery typically lasts about an hour, but it's tricky. It's like trying to sew together strands of spaghetti after it has been ripped apart. Getting the two severed ends to come together is tricky.

"When you try to put together those spaghetti ends, you can't put them together perfectly," Rill said. "So you pull them all so they are compressed together, so they can heal. Maybe, some of the reasons why people don't come back at the same level is because the tendon is a little bit shorter.

"You can't bring them together perfectly, so they are just barely touching. They have to be overlapping and interlocking."

That is why it is so hard to come back from this injury. The tendons don't reattach in exactly the same spot. And the rehabilitation is grueling. "Not all athletes get back to the same level of competition," Rill said. "Some don't jump as high, and they don't have the same explosive push on that first step."

Based on the NBA study, odds are against Jennings being able to recover and reach the level he found the past few weeks, but he has youth on his side. And that's the biggest reason to have any hope that he can come back.

Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff.

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