Warning: The video below is extremely graphic and may be hard for some to watch.
Isaiah Canaan suffered an ankle injury in the final few seconds of the first quarter of the Dallas Mavericks vs. Phoenix Suns game on Wednesday night. Canaan was going up for a dunk when he fell, his left ankle twisting the opposite way.
The announcers were quick to warn viewers to “look away,” but for many, it was too late. There were several athletes on their respective benches who were seen shielding their eyes from the gruesome injury that Canaan had just suffered. It was undoubtedly very hard for people to watch.
“Isaiah Canaan is down and his left ankle is pointing in a direction it shouldn’t. Bone came out. Suns team in shock,” tweeted sports writer Scott Bordow.
Canaan looked down at his foot, which was still pointing in the wrong direction. Team doctors rushed onto the court to tend to Canaan. He was then put on a stretcher and taken to the locker room, several of his teammates patting him on the back.
You can see him leaving the court on a stretcher in the video below.
Isaiah Canaan wheeled off the court. Prayers up.
Several minutes later, Bordow tweeted that Canaan had a “left ankle fracture.” The Suns have since confirmed this diagnosis, which could mean that Canaan’s injury is season-ending. An update from the team is expected sometime tomorrow.
The injury immediately drew comparisons to the one that Boston Celtics’ Gordon Hayward suffered back in October. Hayward had a bone pop out when he fractured his ankle and tore ligaments in his leg, which required surgery and rehab.
“Immediately, I knew something was off, but when I landed, it wasn’t a huge amount of pain. I rolled over and saw my foot, and it was pointed in completely the wrong direction. My first thought was, ‘Oh. This isn’t good. There’s something very wrong here.’ I felt a sense of panic come over me and signaled to the ref, ‘Hey, look at this. You’ve got to stop the game.’ And still, it didn’t seem like it was hurting that much. Then all of a sudden, it came. It was like once my brain figured out what had happened, I was hit with shots of pain,” Hayward wrote on Facebook a couple of weeks after his injury.
Perhaps the good news here is that Hayward’s ankle surgery went really well. It is unknown if Canaan will need surgery following his injury, but the way it looks, he might be following in Hayward’s footsteps soon.
Within minutes of Canaan’s injury, his name started trending on Twitter. Thousands of people have been tweeting about the injury, many sending well-wishes to the basketball star, hoping that he has a speedy recovery.
Canaan was signed by the Suns in December. According to CBS Sports, “he is averaging 9.4 points and 4.2 assists mostly in a backup role with Phoenix. The 6-foot guard is in his fifth NBA season, and has averaged 8.9 points and 3.9 assists for his career with the Rockets, 76ers, Bulls and Suns.”