Celtics doctors explain Kemba Walker's injury and recovery

It's been a whirlwind weekend for the Celtics and Kemba Walker over the past 72 hours after the point guard appeared to suffer a serious injury in Denver following a collision with Semi Ojeleye before given the minor diagnosis of a sprained neck. The team has gone through extraordinary lengths over the past few days to ensure Walker's initial diagnosis of a neck sprain is accurate. In a rare event, team doctor Tony Schena spoke at length with the media on Monday before the Kings game to explain the procedures the team medical staff went through with Walker and give an update on his status and recovery. A few highlights of his remarks:

On the initial injury treatment in Denver: "Any head and neck injury is taken seriously so we think that everything played out was — it was done very professionally. I don’t know if we would have ever changed anything. In general, the Celtics are very supportive of the medical staff, the ownership, the management, the coaches, pretty much they let us do what we need to do and if we think somebody should stay out, or we think they need further tests, they kinda let us do our thing.

"In Kemba’s case, again, for everybody who watched it, he ran head down into Semi. When he landed, he basically had numbness and tingling in his hands. You can imagine that kinda gave him a little bit of a shock, he was kinda freaked out by the whole thing a little bit. He just needed a couple seconds to collect himself. He never lost consciousness. He basically stayed on the floor, mostly as a medical precaution. The medical staff was out there immediately. Because of the mechanism and because he had numbness and tingling in his hands, they took full spine precautions, which is what everybody saw play out on TV.

"They had put him on the spine board, they had to collar him, and they had to bring him, basically, first to the back of the Pepsi Center where he had an initial X-ray done to make sure that at least everything looked pretty good, and it did. It was a negative X-ray. Then he was brought to a level-1 trauma center where he received a full neurological evaluation, a full set of X-rays were done, that was followed up by an MRI and then by another special set of X-rays once they knew that the structures were all stable in his neck to make sure the motion was intact and everything was at normal. Essentially, he had no significant structural damage to the bony architecture of his neck or the soft tissue around his neck.

After the emergency room, physicians did their evaluation. A neurosurgeon did an evaluation and reviewed all the imaging. Because he was going to be traveling and they felt very comfortable having him go home with the team, he was placed into a soft collar. He traveled back with the team the next day."

On his continued evaluation in Boston on Saturday: "When he arrived, we brought him to the Auerbach facility where we did a full evaluation — myself and a spine surgeon, Dr. Eric Carkner from New England Baptist. He reviewed the imaging and we actually sent it to our cervical spine specialist at the New England Baptist to (outrank?) us. So we had our own radiologist review all the imaging as well. Dr. Carkner did his evaluation separate from us so that way he could do an unbiased exam, and at that point, Kemba had no symptoms and he was feeling really well, and he passed the exam.

On Kemba not being diagnosed with a concussion but going through protocol: "Because of the nature of the injury and our concern about running headlong into Semi, who is a solid individual, he had no concussion symptoms but we went through the concussion protocol anyway. So what that meant is on Saturday, he had a full cognitive review with Dr. Napolitana and he passed that. On Sunday, again he woke up, no symptoms. He went to the facility. Preseason, everybody has a preseason evaluation, so he went through the same testing at our facility. He passed that without any issue, so he did a light exercise program, which he passed.

"And so today, Dr. Lanoi Heggart at Mass General, she is an outside physician who helps us with our concussion evaluation, we basically send the players over there and she does a full evaluation on her own. She also does a cognitive evaluation and did a cervical spine evaluation and she found no issues with that. So he basically passed every aspect. The last aspect of the concussion protocol would be for him to participate in a practice, which will be tomorrow. So that brings us to tonight. So tonight, he’s feeling well, he has no symptoms. Really, we’re just going to get him to a full practice and have him progress from there."

Recovery timeline: "Kemba wants to play. Again, we’re just following our protocol. So tomorrow we’ll go through a full practice and we’ll make sure that he feels well. And if he passes—he’s passed all of our tests to date, so I don’t expect it to be very long. But I don’t know that until he actually does a full practice tomorrow, so it’d be a little premature for me to say.

BSJ Analysis:

In short, this press conference was essentially giving the public an extended explanation for an injury situation that ended up looking far worse than it ended up being. While most people would clearly understand the situation (always better safe than sorry), this was a savvy move by the organization to end any unnecessary speculation and take the onus off Brad Stevens and Kemba from answering tough or confusing questions.

For now, it sounds like Walker could see the floor again as soon as Wednesday but the C's will ensure that he's feeling as close to 100 percent as possible in the wake of the injury before giving the green light.