A trip to the zoo
Several Thunder players made a trip to the Oklahoma City Zoo on Wednesday, including guard Alex Abrines, who is still rehabbing a sore knee.
Alex Abrines could run. He could dribble. Turn him loose, and he’d play today.
But as the start of training camp approaches, the Thunder guard is limited; not by what his body is telling him, but by what an MRI says.
Abrines hyperextended his right knee playing for his native Spain in FIBA EuroBasket. And though he was held him out of the rest of the tournament – at least in part at the request of the Thunder, according to an earlier report from Spanish website MARCA – Abrines said the injury’s effects didn’t linger long.
“I didn’t feel pain at all after the first day,” he said Wednesday during a Thunder Cares visit to the Oklahoma City Zoo. “But the MRI said I had a bone bruise, so that’s what keeps me (off) of the court.”
Abrines said he’s pain free and could do “everything” on the court, but until the bone bruise is gone, the Thunder is playing it safe and limiting him. He started shooting on Wednesday, he said, but mostly his rehab has involved swimming, pool workouts and running on the AlterG, an anti-gravity treadmill.
Abrines doesn’t know yet if he’ll still be limited when training camp opens on Tuesday, but he’s anxious to get back on the floor.
He spent much of the summer getting stronger – he bulked up to 211 pounds, he said, and has maintained nearly that weight.
A 38.1 percent 3-point shooter last season, Abrines gets up jumpers immediately after weightlifting, he said, to minimize the impact of strength training on his shooting stroke.
That new weight might “drop down a little bit,” he said, as he focuses less on strength and more on other parts of his game in preparation for the season.
And he’s anxious to be back on the court focusing less on that preparation and more on his game.
“For me, I could do everything, because I don’t feel any pain,” Abrines said. “It just depends on the doctors right now.”
Zoo crew
From the back of a long golf cart, Steven Adams had questions.
Did the rhino have “a lady?” How much human oversight goes into zoo animal reproduction? Could he enter the gorilla habitat?
(The answers: Yes; no more than necessary; unequivocally no.)
Adams was in his element at the Oklahoma City Zoo on Wednesday. He, Abrines, Enes Kanter, Jerami Grant and Dakari Johnson visited to help students tag monarch butterflies, but in the sweltering heat, that mission was short-lived. Before long, the Thunder players were hugging a sea lion and feeding elephants, touring the zoo on a visit that lasted an hour longer than expected. Grant held a canvas as one of the elephants, holding the brush with her trunk. Grant got to keep the artwork.
“I love animals, mate,” Adams said. “They’re awesome. I prefer them to people. Not all of them. I do have my favorite humans.”
Adams’ interest in animal reproduction dates back, he said, to his time on working on a farm, artificially inseminating cows.
“It’s pretty weird,” Adams said. “But it’s pretty cool at the same time. It’s interesting. I can’t say too much.”