Anthony Davis says pain has ‘subsided tremendously’ in foot, details injury diagnosis

After keeping every in the dark effectively since it occurred, Anthony Davis peeled back the curtain on Friday to provide all the details on the injury that will sideline him indefinitely. In fact, it should be described as injuries.

Davis said he is dealing with both a fractured bone spur in his leg as well as a stress reaction in the navicular bone. The latter of those was caused by the bone spur repeatedly making contact with his navicular bone, creating the stress reaction.

The good news is that Davis had good news about the healing process.

“I’m feeling a lot better,” Davis said, via Spectrum SportsNet. “The pain has subsided tremendously.”

Davis detailed the process of learning he was injured to seeking out multiple opinions in the week that followed. The surgery considered would have removed the bone spur but when it was determined surgery was not necessary, AD, who noted he is not a fan of surgeries, chose that route.

The week of silence after the injury included visiting five doctors and having imaging done multiple times to see how the injury was reacting and healing. So far, it’s been all good news for AD and the Lakers, but he did note that it was challenging mentally in the immediate aftermath of the injury.

“The doctor told me I had a fracture in a bone spur in my foot,” AD said. “At that moment and maybe leading into the next day, it was tough for me mentally just because of the fact that, coming off last year with the injuries and coming out and having a mindset of getting back to the mindset of who I want to be as a player and (I) was in that mode, for something like this to happen, it was just tough mentally.”

As the injury continues to heal, Davis will undergo another MRI when the team returns to Los Angeles after the new year. While he did say it’s healing quickly, he opted against putting any kind of timetable or date on his return.

“I think the next step is healing right now,” AD said. “I don't want to use timetables because if you don’t meet that timetable, it’s a whole different thing. But it’s healing pretty quickly. When we get back to LA, we’ll do another image of the foot and see how far it is healed since the last time I did it...It’s really just about pain. The pain is still there. I still feel it a little bit. Not as much as I did before.

“Then, if I see that it’s healed properly and enough where I can go and start ramping up on the court, then we’ll start that process.”

Without him, the Lakers have struggled mightily. Heading into Friday’s game in Atlanta, the team had dropped to seven games under .500 after losing five of their last six games. The defense has collapsed without AD, who did so much to cover up the cracks.

Now, the conversation has changed to whether it’s even worth salvaging the remains of this season as LeBron James publicly pleads for the front office to make a move. It’s a far cry from where we stood earlier this season, watching AD put up historic numbers.

For now, the focus for AD is not on getting back to that level both individually as a team. It’s simply just getting back.

“I’m just really excited to get back on the floor, whenever that day is,” Davis said. “To pick up where I left off, that’s my mindset. There hasn’t been a ‘Man, it’s going to take me x amount of games to get back into rhythm’ or ‘Man, I might not be the same.’ That’s not even been a thought in my mind. My thought has been whenever that day is, it’s go time.”

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