METAIRIE, La. -- Ryan Anderson has missed the past seven games with what is now being called a sports hernia. A trip to Philadelphia on Monday will ultimately determine if the New Orleans Pelicans, who have seven games left on their regular-season slate, will see him on the floor again before he becomes an unrestricted free agent this summer.

"Monday's going to be a big day for me," he said.

Anderson, who said he has small tears on both sides of his groin, will seek a second opinion from a specialist when the team travels to Philadelphia on Monday as part of a three-game East Coast road trip that begins Sunday in Brooklyn.

Ryan Anderson has averaged 17 points and six rebounds in 66 games played for the Pelicans this season. AP Photo/Max Becherer

The 27-year-old said the research he's done while on the shelf shows that 23 of the 25 NBA players who have had sports hernias over the past decade elected for surgery.

"I've done a lot of research about it over the past few days," he said. "It's a pretty successful thing to recover from and everything. But surgery, I'm not like really jumping for joy to go get surgery again though, if that's the case. But you got to do what you got to do."

Anderson missed 60 games in 2013-14 after surgery to address a herniated cervical disc and 21 games the following season. He had missed just two games because of illness this season until this recent injury. He said he began feeling what he thought was a "bad pull" of his groin during a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on March 18 and has been sidelined ever since.

In the meantime, he said he's been limited to mostly massages, stretching and core exercises.

"We've been doing core work, but not court work," Anderson said. "Because we were doing [court work] for a little while and it was just kind of that same thing every day. I just couldn't get past a certain level of feeling normal, of feeling good. So Monday, when he tells me what's going on, how it's healed over the past two and a half weeks or whatever since I've been out, we'll see if it's good to gear up or if we should keep holding back or whatever."

The Pelicans have lost 285 games to injury and illness and used 38 different starting lineups this season, both the most in the NBA.

New Orleans has already shut down Anthony Davis (left knee), Jrue Holiday (right orbital fracture), Tyreke Evans(right knee), Eric Gordon (right finger), Quincy Pondexter (left knee), Alonzo Gee (right quad) and Bryce Dejean-Jones (right wrist) for the season.

Norris Cole, also an impending unrestricted free agent, has missed the past 13 games with a lower back injury. Pelicans coach Alvin Gentry was unsure Saturday if the team would suit up Cole and Anderson again this season.

"I think as obviously the games go on it's more and more unlikely that we'll see them," Gentry said. "Especially we're in a situation now where we're in single-digit games. And so we're going to go play a trip right here, and if they're not going to play on this trip [it's] probably more than likely that they wouldn't play."

Anderson is expecting to have an answer to that question soon.

"I think that's what's driving me the most crazy because I don't have my mind set on one thing I have to do right now," he said. "Should I rest? Should I do this? That's Monday."