Eric Gordon tears his labrum, is out indefinitely

On Saturday, New Orleans Pelicans guard Eric Gordon left his team’s contest with the Utah Jazz with what appeared to be a separated shoulder. He had already dropped eight points in 13 minutes in what was probably shaping up to be his best game of the season.

On Monday afternoon, the Pelicans released a statement to the press:

The New Orleans Pelicans announced today that guard Eric Gordon will be out indefinitely with a left shoulder injury. An MRI revealed Gordon suffered a torn labrum as a result of the left shoulder subluxation injury that occurred Saturday night at Utah.

Gordon will undergo further evaluation throughout this week by the team's medical staff to determine the best course of action moving forward. More details will be released as they become available.

The details are more or less in place. Gordon may return this season to play with the Pelicans, but these are the sorts of injuries that tend to linger. Gordon’s injury history has tended to linger, if we’re honest.

Eric didn’t project to be a star of sorts in his first two seasons with the Los Angeles Clippers, but he did bust out in his third turn with a 22 points per game average in his third turn with the team, his first with Blake Griffin. The problem with that turn is that he missed 26 games with a fractured right wrist.

Traded to New Orleans prior to 2011-12, Gordon dropped 20 points and even hit the game-winning jumper in his first game with the team, but he was soon sidelined when a suspected bone bruise turned out to be a torn cartilage injury in his right knee. Why New Orleans, then owned by the NBA, didn’t decide to perform an innocuous MRI on the player that they essentially dealt Chris Paul for is beyond comprehension, and the arthroscopic surgery that resulted failed to correct the problem. Gordon missed all but nine of that season’s 66 games.

Gordon then signed a four-year and more than $58 million offer sheet with the Phoenix Suns during the 2012 offseason that New Orleans eventually matched, against Gordon’s wishes. He held off on having microfracture surgery, the usual remedy for lingering cartilage issues, instead preferring rehab and a quick return. The result left Eric on the shelf for nearly half the 2012-13 season. Last season, he missed 18 games due to left knee issues.

The former Indiana Hoosier has played decidedly mediocre ball in the years since the initial knee injury, which sadly and ironically happened after Gordon banged knees with the similarly snakebit Grant Hill. The contract the Pelicans matched for his services isn’t as nasty as some of the other massive maximum contract deals that are still floating around the NBA’s books, but Eric will be paid nearly $15 million this season and over $15.5 million the next year. His Player Efficiency Rating dropped into the single digits this season, the amount of three-pointers he fired away this season shot up from his norms (at a below average 34 percent success rate, to boot), and his assist percentage plummeted even with fantastic finishers like Anthony Davis and Ryan Anderson dashing around.

The Pelicans remain thin at shooting guard. Austin Rivers has enjoyed a solid season and has actually outplayed Gordon thus far, but he’s still a below average player and there is no telling how well he’d perform in the face of starters on defense. The Pelicans can go big by moving Tyreke Evans into the backcourt, but he’s far from a knockout shooter. Jimmer Fredette is a knockout shooter, but he can knock you out of the game on the other end of the floor. Worse, even though NOLA has started the season by winning seven of its first 12 games, that’s only good for last place in the NBA’s loaded Southwest Division.

Eric Gordon’s injuries all came by accidents, caused by hard fouls and/or bad luck. There is a very good possibility that the rest needed to heal his ailing knees might come via the unexpected sit time that his shoulder injury will require, but we do know that he also played terrible ball to start the season. A season that may be irrevocably altered, prior to what will undoubtedly he his final season in Louisiana in 2015-16.

The Pelicans remain one of the NBA’s great stories, but it’s deadening to see how far Eric Gordon has fallen in just three calendar years.

- - - - - - -

Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops

from Yahoo Sports http://ift.tt/1xPaQKJ