| 15 March 2010
The scar on Jeff Pendergraph's left knee is around three inches long.
In a rookie season that’s seen him ride Portland’s carousel of centers to riding the pine behind Marcus Camby and Juwan Howard since mid-February, the scar provides a constant reminder of just how far Pendergraph’s really come.
He was 18 years old and weeks removed from high school. Jeff had already completed summer school at Arizona State University and was preparing for his freshman season of college basketball with the Sun Devils. He’d just passed his team physical to perfection.
Still, concerns lingered.
“The doctors asked me if there was anything that was bothering me: do my knees hurt, do my legs hurt, do my hands hurt,” Pendergraph remembered, rubbing his hand gently over his left knee.
“I said no, but when I would sit in the car for a long time my knee hurts.”
X-Rays soon revealed a dark spot on his femur, right at the end of Jeff’s thighbone behind his left kneecap.
“They kept saying ‘growth’, ‘growth.' I thought like a bone spur or something. But then they said it could be cancerous and that’s why they wanted to take it out. It didn’t really hit me right then. I didn’t know what to think. I thought, ‘I have to have surgery. That sucks.’ The surgery was supposed to be a little scope surgery. Before I know it, they gashed me.”
It wasn’t until he came out of the procedure that reality struck hard.
“I was thinking about....I could have had cancer.”
Laid-up for six months, Pendergraph underwent three months of rehab to repair the cartilage in his left knee. All this even before he got the chance to play his first game at ASU – a solid career which ended with Jeff the lone senior for the Sun Devils and NBA bound last July.
Soon, another surgery (hip) awaited last summer followed by a remarkable rebound; just another obstacle in a long line of hurdles Pendergraph’s overcome the past few years.
Now as his first regular season in the league draws to a close in another 13 games and his first postseason with the Blazers around the corner, Jeff can look back and laugh at life.
The knee is fine. No problems. The scar serves as his daily history lesson.
But even scars take time to heal.
“I remember I got it (the operation) done in August, on my sister’s birthday,” Pendergraph said with a smile about his younger sister, Samantha.
“I missed her birthday. She was pissed.”
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