Although it never cost him any time on the court, Dallas Mavericks big man Anthony Davis suffered an injury back in April that he will be required to manage for the remainder of his career. It will be hard to forget, given the requirement he will have to wear protective gear because of it.
Davis suffered an injury to his right eye during a game back on April 2, when his teammate Daniel Gafford inadvertently elbowed him in his eye, causing a detached retina. Although he would miss the Mavericks‘ next game, it appears to be coincidental, as he was listed on the injury report that night as being out with an adductor strain, one he had been battling for the previous couple of months.
At the Mavericks‘ media day, though, Davis announced that doctors had warned him the detached retina he suffered courtesy of Gafford could have long-term consequences, and that he has been advised to wear protective goggles for the rest of his career.
The NBA’s Best Gogglists
Davis will join a fraternity of NBA big men who made eyewear apart of their identity. Sometimes reluctantly, sometimes fashionably, but always out of necessity, he will have his forebears in the goggling department, including players of some calibre.
The most famous member of the goggles club is, of course, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. After scratching his cornea multiple times in the early 1970s, Kareem turned to goggles permanently, despite initially hating them because of how they would fog up and obstruct his vision. They would however go on to become as much a part of his image as his iconic skyhook – even the ones that made it look like he was about to go scuba diving.
Later came Horace Grant, whose goggles were famous visual accessories during the championship banners he helped the Chicago Bulls raise in the 1990s. Unlike Kareem or Stoudemire, Grant did not suffer an injury to get his eyewear; instead, he was near-sighted and used prescription lenses. And when Grant began to observe that children across Chicago were showing up to games wearing toy replicas, they became a cultural touchpoint.
Amar’e Stoudemire followed decades later. A detached retina in 2009 saw him start wearing goggles, then stop, before being convinced to restart again after surgery on the eye. Doctor knows best. And then, in a different but parallel were, there were also Richard Hamilton’s face masks.
Mavericks Need Him At Full Health
Already dogged by a career full of injury – playing only 787 regular season games in a 13-season career – Davis needs to manage everything manageable to prolong his career. He has missed time for ailments to most body parts at this point, and needs to put together a full season of quality play while he still can if the team is ever to begin the process of shifting the Luka Doncic hangover.
On the plus side, modern playing goggles are designed to resist fog, frames are lighter, and teams work with equipment specialists to ensure minimal interference with play. Hopefully, they are also built robustly enough to withstand an inadvertent Daniel Gafford elbow, too.
Anthony Davis Will Carry An Injury for the Remainder of his Career