According to The San Francisco Standard, in the last 20 years, no NBA player Jimmy Butler’s age or older has returned from a torn ACL. Even in other team sports, it’s nearly impossible to find a comparable success story.

That doesn’t mean the 36-year-old Warriors wing can’t return to the court — just that the challenges he faces are practically unparalleled. 

“He’s in a better situation than most 36-year-olds,” Laura Moore, MD, PhD, sports medicine surgeon at HSS said. “But everything gets harder when you get older. It’s harder. You’re probably at a little higher risk for stiffness, you’re at a higher risk for persistent swelling, you’re at a little bit of higher risk for aches and pains. And as you get older, it’s always harder to recover muscle mass. So he’s not a typical 36-year-old, but everything gets harder when you’re older.” 

Butler will have every resource — physical therapists, recovery technology, athletic trainers managing swelling — available to him to achieve the best outcome possible. Still, he is “at kind of the tail-end of the bell curve for ACL injuries,” Dr. Moore said. 

Read the full article at sfstandard.com.