Injury is one of the sad parts about being an athlete and the news of sustaining a season ending injury (or even worse, a career ending injury) is always bad news for the athlete involved. The NBA has been plagued by a lot of injuries lately, starting with the pre-season and carrying over to the regular season. Last season, Nene and Amare Stoudemire sat the entire season (Amare tried to make an early comeback and went down again) and this year Chris Mihm will sit out while Pau Gasol is missing a huge part of the season due to injury.The latest victim is the oft-injured Nugget forward Kenyon Martin. Martin just played 2 games this season before sustaining a season ending injury, an injury initially thought would take just a few weeks to recover.

The Nuggets announced Wednesday that Martin will be out for the season after undergoing arthroscopic surgery on his right knee at the Steadman Hawkins Clinic in Vail. Martin underwent surgery Wednesday, and significant damage was found in the knee, more than a magnetic resonance imaging exam previously had revealed.

Rocky Mountain News 11/15/06

The Nuggets have struggled early to win games but are slowly inching their way to wins. this is a good sign that the Nuggets probably won’t miss Kenyon too much. They were able to play well last season despite the absence of Nene so this year I guess they’ll be able to do well without Martin. The Nuggets stacked up on bigs during the off season (like acquiring Joe Smith from the Bucks) to prepare precisely for something like this to happen. On a team chemistry perspective, it’s actually good that Martin went down early rather than late (assuming it’s certain he would go down). At least the team can adjust early to his absence and build on that and carry it over to the later part of the season.