By Graham Couch

Lansing State Journal

NEW YORK – Denzel Valentine couldn’t escape questions about his knees in the days leading up to NBA draft. Reporters sometimes didn’t know which knee or the full narrative, so they pluralized it — “knees.”

He answered each time politely, shaking off any frustration rather than shaking his head.

He’d just played 144 of 148 possible games in four years at Michigan State and hadn’t missed a game because of the knee in question. His right knee.

“It’s funny to me. I really don’t see the problem,” Valentine said, walking from one interview to the next. “We’ve talked to the doctors. I played almost every single game (at MSU).”

It’s not that funny to him. And the concerns raised recently surprised him. Because he can count the number of games he missed in four years at MSU on one hand. And the number of practices missed on two hands. And they had nothing to do with this knee.

But there’s nothing he can do about it, other than to proclaim good health and remind folks of his durability. The story line has taken hold, making one of the safest picks in tonight’s NBA draft seem less safe. He’s still projected as a sure first-round pick. He doesn’t have any pain. He’s enjoying himself in New York, less nervous about the draft than his parents. He knows he’ll get his chance to prove his worth and sturdiness at the NBA level shortly.

What he didn’t see coming, though, was a ninth-grade football injury producing an MRI result at the NBA draft combine in May that would cause a ruckus.

In 2009, Valentine had surgery to repair cartilage that slipped or had been knock off the bone. Osteochondritis dissecans it’s called.

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Dr. Julie Dodds, a renowned East Lansing orthopedic surgeon, performed the procedure, putting the cartilage back in place with a couple of screws. Two months later, she removed the screws once the cartilage had “healed down very nicely,” she said. A year later, an MRI scan showed the same thing. The knee was fine.

“So, I was actually kind of surprised, and I think Denzel was surprised, too, that he goes to the (NBA) combine and all of a sudden teams are going, ‘There’s a problem here.’ ” Dodds said Wednesday by phone. “Because he’s been totally asymptomatic and not had any problems with it.”

Dodds said some teams misread the MRI from the combine, thrown off by what was a cutting-edge procedure then. Doctors didn’t used to regularly put back the cartilage. Dodds even presented Valentine’s case at a national convention.

What NBA teams actually found, Dodds said, is fairly common wear and tear for an elite athlete of Valentine’s size and the demands on his body. Any talk of a degenerating knee is only accurate if you include 70% of athletes in Valentine’s circumstances.

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“It’s pretty common in high-level athletes to see that,” Dodds said. “Because they do things that are superhuman and things that the body isn’t necessarily meant to do.”

Dodds, who last examined Valentine on Monday night, said she has spoken with eight NBA team doctors about Valentine’s right knee.

“It’s really interesting talking to a lot of the pro team doctors,” said Dodds, who’s also a consultant for the Toronto Blue Jays. “I had one doctor who said, ‘Yeah, he’ll be fine, I don’t see any problems at all.’ And then I talked to another (who saw it differently), and these are guys that I know personally and I actually know their personalities. A lot of them err on the side of being cautious just because if they go tell their owners or coaches that this guy is going to be fine and then he isn’t fine, it reflects back on them."

There’s a lot stake for NBA teams in the draft. If any were looking for an excuse not to take Valentine, this is it. Playing up the concern could also be a smokescreen for a team that’s hoping he slides to them. Valentine isn’t a player who relies on supreme athleticism to play at the NBA level or violent torque on his knees to jump over and through defenders, like Derrick Rose for example, who shares the same agent. But the concerns by some teams about Valentine, warranted or not, are genuine, one scout said Thursday.

“Whoever has that opinion of me or feels a certain way, then they feel that way,” Valentine said.

Dodds thought the knee “looked good” when she examined it Monday.

“The last three to five years, he’s put his knee through a lot of rigors and it’s had to withstand a lot of stress. I think his prognosis is good. (In terms of) longevity, all of these people who play high-level sports don’t expect to have knees that are perfect for the rest of their lives. That’s kind of the price you pay to do the high-level sports and do superhuman things to your joints. That’s what anybody in the NBA expects — they’ll do great for a while and then things start to deteriorate a little bit. And that’s kind of what I would expect with him. But I don’t know that it’s any quicker than anybody else in the NBA.”

Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @Graham_Couch.

MSU's Denzel Valentine wins Big Ten male athlete of year

Locals in the draft

Here’s a look at players with Michigan ties who could be drafted:

■Deyonta Davis, MSU PF, Round 1 projection.

■Denzel Valentine, MSU SG, Round 1 projection.

■Caris LeVert, Michigan SG, Round 1/2 projection.

■Kay Felder, Oakland PG, Round 2 projection.

■Max Hooper, Oakland SG, undrafted free agent projection.

■Bryn Forbes, MSU SG, undrafted free agent projection.

■Jalen Reynolds, Xavier F from Detroit, undrafted free agent projection.