AUBURN HILLS, Mich. -- When Manu Ginobili didn't travel with his teammates to New York earlier this week due to soreness in his right ankle, speculation arose that he might be nursing a serious injury, especially when the team was slow to update his status. After all, with the league's trade deadline looming Thursday afternoon, why would San Antonio give up any leverage?Once the deadline came and passed, Gregg Popovich spoke candidly about Ginobili's condition before Thursday's game in Detroit. "I just got official reports from the doctors, they say he's got a stress reaction in his distal fibula of his ankle," Popovich said. "Not a stress fracture, [but] a stress reaction, which is very different. A stress fracture goes all the way through the bone, and a stress reaction, I'm told, is just topical."
The good news is that the affected area has already begun to heal -- Popovich said that X-rays indicated new bone is already starting to form. "From today it'll probably be another two to three weeks," he said.
Ginobili has been playing through pain for a while, and when it didn't disappear over the All-Star break, he underwent X-rays, an MRI and a CAT scan to determine the severity of his injury. Popovich admitted he was surprised to learn how bad it was considering how well Ginobili, who had 32 points in the Spurs' last game before the break, had been playing.
Entering Thursday's game, the Spurs are 6-8 this year when Ginobili doesn't play. He missed the first 12 games of the season recovering from surgery on his left ankle. Not having his super sixth man will force Popovich to get creative with his rotations, which he admitted he'll make up on the fly. "The guys that are left will play," he said. "I don't know who's going to get what minutes -- I got no clue. I don't know who I'm going to put in first. I just do it by the seat of my pants. Truthfully."
