Surgery on horizon?
down with my family, my agent we’ll, going to take care of it.”
He said it is too late to consider surgery at this stage of the season.
“I just play through it, though. I got to,” he said. “I don’t make no excuses. I don’t want that to be the reason why. It just is what it is. It’s something that I don’t like to talk about because there’s nothing we can really do right now. Just try to take care of it and get it stronger and things like that.
“And it’s just that I don’t want to be in this predicament, where if it’s a little tweak you have to miss a decent amount just off a little tweak.”
He said he does not expect to miss as much time as he did when he missed the final 13 games last season.
“Less than that,” he said. “I don’t know, honestly, but I don’t have me being out that long — especially if I’m able to test it and things like that and see how I feel. And if it’s to where I feel good, I’ll go out there.”
He said he knew it was a recurrence as soon as he took his misstep Saturday.
“I just felt that pain, man, that pain. It’s crazy,” he said, with an X-ray and MRI coming back negative. “I hate it. It’s not fun at all. So, once I did it … I tried to run it off and hopefully loosen up. I actually really came back in to get re-taped and once I took the sneaker off and the tape, it was over.”
Waiters is utilizing a walking boot when off the court.
“It’s to the point it don’t even swell anymore, “he said. “It’s like pain, excruciating pain.” and one step forward only to fall two steps back. That, however, well could prove to be the case with James Johnson.
Back in the rotation just before the Christmas break after missing three games with ankle bursitis, the versatile forward has returned to the team’s injury roll, with a recurrence that now has him out indefinitely.
“It was really disappointing for me,” Johnson said before Tuesday’s game. “I really thought I could go, despite the pain or despite J-Bo (trainer Jay Sabol) being a great trainer, not wanting me to go. But that’s the kind of guy I am. But we were down some men and I wanted to do my best.”
Johnson wound up limited to only a cameo in Saturday’s loss to the Pelicans before heading to the locker room following a second-quarter misstep.
“I’m just out day by day right now,” he said. “It just comes back, goes away, comes back, comes away, so just keep rehabbing, keep getting my conditioning in and hopefully it calms down soon.”
The forward rewarded with a fouryear, $60 million contract in the offseason now is expected to be closely monitored until a more complete return to health.
“My foot wasn’t functional at the time,” Johnson said of leaving Saturday’s game, “but I think it was way better just not coming back out at halftime than it was when I just had to leave the court, for sure. So I feel improvement. I see improvement on it. So, like I said, just day-to-day treatment as much as I can.”
iwinderman@sunsentinel.com.