Manning Is Out for Rest of the Season : Torn Ligament May Cause Him to Miss 1989-90, Too

Danny Manning will require major reconstructive knee surgery that will sideline him for the rest of this season and possibly all of next, Clipper team physician Dr. Tony Daly announced Wednesday.

Daly confirmed speculation that, during the first quarter of last Wednesday’s game at Milwaukee, Manning completely tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, one of the worst injuries a basketball player can suffer. Daly had said previously that the rookie star suffered some damage to the knee and, more recently, said that he was 95% sure the ligament was torn.

“If all goes extremely well, he could be ready at the start of next season,” Daly said before Wednesday night’s loss to Sacramento at the Sports Arena. “Realistically, the general consensus is that it takes 1 year.”

But could Manning also miss the entire 1989-90 season with rehabilitation that has been known to take 18 months?

“That’s a possibility,” Daly said.

Is there also a possibility that Manning will never play again?

“Obviously, there is. He could get a stiff knee out of it all. . . . But the odds are that he’ll be back. Will he come back at 100%? That’s the part we’re unsure about.”

Despite the diagnosis of his team doctor, Clipper owner Donald Sterling said of Manning’s status: “I want to reserve comment until after the definitive tests are performed.”

But Manning and agent Ron Grinker, satisfied with a pair of computer-enhanced X-rays taken Friday and Tuesday, said there will be no more tests. They said the operation will take place within a week, but since they have decided against having Daly perform it, they first need to select a surgeon.

Grinker said five or six doctors across the nation are being considered. It is known that Manning met Wednesday with Robert Kerlan, a prominent Inglewood physician, who asked him to return Friday for a re-evaluation. But Manning may leave Southern California for the surgery and subsequent rehabilitation.

Manning said at a halftime news conference: “The night after the game, I knew it was a little more than a hyperextension (as originally diagnosed). But it’s something that happened, and I can’t go back in time, so I have to prepare for the future. The future for me is surgery and rehabilitation.

“I want to get it done as soon as possible. The sooner the surgery is done, the sooner the leg will heal, the sooner I can begin rehabilitation and get back to playing.

“I know there’s a chance I will come back and might not be the same player. But those are the cards I was dealt, so I have to go from there. I can’t stand up here and cry about it.

“I’ll play basketball again, but I just don’t know at what level. I will walk again, and that’s the most important part.”

The operation, a procedure that can last from 1 to 2 hours, involves taking a tendon from the leg and putting it where the damaged ligament used to be. The tendon will be attached to the knee and eventually will act as the new ligament.

The anterior cruciate ligament, which on the right leg runs in a diagonal from the shinbone to the back of the thighbone, keeps the leg from flexing forward beyond a straight leg. Because of the constant stopping, starting and turning on a hard floor, the joint takes a severe pounding in basketball.

Manning’s injury is the same one that sidelined, among others, Steve Kerr, then at the University of Arizona and now with the Phoenix Suns; Bernard King, then of the New York Knicks and now with the Washington Bullets; Mitch Kupchak, then with the Lakers and now the team’s assistant general manager; former Clipper Michael Brooks; Eddie Lee Wilkins of the Knicks, and Archie Marshall, Manning’s friend and teammate last season on Kansas’ NCAA championship team, who is now out of basketball. Kupchak, Kerr and Marshall suffered additional damage to their knees.

Manning, 23, the Clippers’ No. 1 draft pick, who missed the first 4 games of the season because of a contract holdout, was averaging 16.7 points and 6.6 rebounds. Having emerged as one of the leading candidates for rookie of the year, he was already an integral part of the Clippers and was regarded as the foundation of the team’s future.

Without him, the immediate future, at least, looks bleak. Since his injury, the Clippers have lost 4 games by an average of 26.5 points.

Wilkins tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee on a slam dunk just before the 1985-86 season. Kupchak injured his left knee 26 games into the 1981-82 season and, likewise, had major reconstructive surgery and lengthy rehabilitation.

Now they empathize with Manning.

“I have quite a bit of compassion for him,” Kupchak said. “At first, you think about his ordeal. Then you think about the Clippers being snakebitten again.

“I came to L.A. (in 1981), and midway through my first season, I went down. Now it’s his first season in L.A., and he goes down. It’s certainly not the way anybody would have planned it, but I certainly know what he’s going through.

“Out of all the joints in a basketball player’s body, the knee and the ankle are the most important. The knee goes through some very unusual movements in basketball. If you were to do a slow-motion picture of the leg up close in a game, what it does to the knee is hard to believe, with all the turning and stopping after a full sprint.

“If he gets a good, tight repair and disciplines himself real hard during rehabilitation, he should be able to come back in some form.”

Wilkins, who has rejoined the Knicks, said: “It was real frightening. My year and my career could have been ending, and at the time, I didn’t have a contract. Dr. (Norman) Scott (the Knicks’ team physician) told me there was a good chance I would never play again.

“You really have got to want to come back. This injury is very career-threatening.”

Wilkins said his rehabilitation took 1 1/2 years. Now he said he is “better than before, because I probably work my legs harder than before the operation.”

Wilkins had some advice for Manning: “I’d tell him that he has an example out there that you can come back from this surgery. Then I’d tell him it will take a total effort with a lot of pain and a lot of time. It’s not going to happen overnight. It may take a year, it may take 2 years, but he can make it back.”