That'll teach him for trying to take a pic of Kobe with his mobile phone

^ stupid post Anon.

Best of luck Ballinger. There is a solid team taking the court this season and the sooner your back at the 4 the better. GO YOU SIXERS! GAME ON!

Only got an MRI last week?
who is his physio ?!?

huge massive disappointment !
ok there have been a few leaks saying he hasnt been training with the group, but never considered it this bad. large number of bone chips .... lets hope they dont miss any !

ok i'll ask... why wouldnt this have been done in the OFF SEASON not at the start of pre-season training????

He has been trying to rehab it without surgery, I guess they where waiting until the last possible minute to do surgery.

We will soon see if Ballinger theory is right or wring with this injury

I assumed they just thought it was a sprain taking its time to heal, as Balls said himself in the paper. I'm not sure there needs to be a great conspiracy to explain it. He might've been hoping to get it right (with a full off-season) without surgery, etc.

Isaac, a conspiracy theory is always more fun:

This is clearly further evidence that Marty doesn't want Ballinger on the team so Marty has engineered it so that Balls will be on the injured list and miss all of pre-season training. OMG, the fact that my theory is somewhat outlandish only lends it credibility. If the Sixers now deny it, you know it must be true!

My concern beyond that is Herbert surviving the pre-season intact.

Yeah, I always get a tear in my eye when I think of how tough it must be to be a professional sportman being paid $100s of thousands of dollars for six months work playing the sport they love. How dare anyone expect a level of professionalism or hard work to go with that? My sympathy is endless in this regard.

Goorjian required players to buy into his system too, and reportedly ran some of the toughest training sessions around. Some people even blame his trainings on the drop off of his teams in finals. But his record speaks for itself, and he changed the way the game was played in Australia. Apparently Marty is 'more relaxed' this year whatever that means, but the way I see it no matter how good they are a player has to be prepared to play for the coach, not the other way around.

plus they are operating on a different foot from the one he allegedly injured.

Plus i heard from the surgeon that it is not his foot at all but a second

makes you think huh?

if the 6ers didnt want on the team he wouldnt be the captain

I met a Sixers fan who said the exploratory surgery was to look for his defence.

Muzz, what makes you think it's the other foot? Article says he jumped off his left foot and when landing it rolled and that the surgery is on his left foot.

They've got him on conspiracy
but they're not sure who with

PMSL. This has really entertained me the last 15 minutes! I love a good conspiracy theory!

Heard that Balls went back to the US during the off-season, thinking the ankle would come good during that time. Can anyone confirm? If true, how do the 36ers medical staff have any say in that? "Hey Adam, we don't believe your personal opinion on your ankle and you're not going back home." How would that go down? I think it just turned out to be more serious than he thought and due to the trip, the timing is not ideal. Shit happens - doesn't sound like he'll miss the season proper (or much of it) and for once we have good coverage in the frontcourt.

At least it's being dealt with now rather than mid-season.

The ankle should have been scanned before he went back to the US. Fair enough he might have bought the ticket before the injury, but surely they were examining and treating it before he left.

A bone chip that size, i am surprised that the treating medical staff could not feel it, let alone see it on a scan, but one rumour is that last weeks scan was the first time someone had thought to look at it ?!?

I'll pay that anon. Did wonder if it was cherry-sized or cherrystone-sized as the former seems pretty crazy?

Someone's forwarded a picture of what was removed - it's not tiny. Mentioned a second opinion was what led to surgery. This one could be on 36ers docs for missing it?

Is it fair to assume that there would have been a scan in that situation? Could they (player, doctors, etc) have collectively decided later that evening that it was a sprain and should be OK? Had heard that the type of fracture sustained is one that is typically difficult to spot, but I don't know how that explains the size of what was later pulled out!