Joel Freeland returns to practice, “feels good” and wants to play Friday
After straining his left hip in the second half Saturday against the Spurs, Portland’s Joel Freeland finally returned to full practice action on Thursday.
“I’m better, I went through pretty much the whole practice today,” said Freeland “I’m pretty pain free and obviously I have little bit of pain still but we’ll see how it feels tomorrow.”
Freeland says that he has been doing many different types of treatment to help get the hip nursed back to health.
“I’ve been in everyday doing massages, ice, hot tub, the normatec machine which is just a massage up and down the leg,” he said. “A lot of things keeping on top of it. Chris (Stackpole) has been keeping on top of it. Exercises to try and strengthen it up, a lot of stuff.”
LaMarcus Aldridge, who also returned to practice after dealing with a family matter, has been one of Freeland’s most vocal supporters since the preseason and did not see any lingering effects of the injury during Freeland’s participation in practice.
“He looked good. I didn’t see anything lingering,” Aldridge said. “He was active, crashing the boards and getting inside being the active guy that he is. He looked good today.”
Erik Gundersen
Erik Gundersen is the Trail Blazers beat reporter for The Columbian. He's a graduate of the Allen School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon in addition earning a degree in Spanish. He's covered the NBA for four seasons. You can also occasionally find his work on ESPN.com's NBA section for their TrueCities series. He also fist-bumped with Kanye West once. Follow @BlazerBanter on twitter for more Blazers and NBA news.