Spurs’ Wembanyama can be full participant at camp

It’s full steam ahead for Victor Wembanyama.

The San Antonio Spurs star has been cleared for all basketball activities at training camp, coach Mitch Johnson said Monday as the team reported for work.

“He’s been ramping up. He’s in a really good place,” Johnson said.

Wembanyama dealt with deep vein thrombosis in his shoulder toward the end of last season.

The seven-foot-three centre was averaging 24.3 points, 11 rebounds, 3.8 blocks and 3.7 assists per game when he was shut down in February; the only other player in NBA history to finish a season averaging all that was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975-76.

The fact that Wembanyama has been cleared suggests that his type of DVT was provoked, which would rule out a genetic predisposition to a clot returning. The Spurs have not disclosed specifics of Wembanyama’s shoulder issue, but there is a type of DVT that appears when a blood vessel in someone’s upper arm can be compressed by a rib (the top rib is removed in some cases to relieve the compression, if that is the cause) or a muscle. Such issues have proven to be treatable in the past.

Many other athletes have dealt with similar issues. Serena Williams came back to dominate women’s tennis after a clotting issue following the birth of her daughter; Williams needed four surgeries to address the matter. Basketball Hall of Famer Chris Bosh had to eventually retire from the NBA after he was diagnosed with multiple clots. In hockey, Tomas Fleischmann developed clots and went on to play for years afterward; Tomas Vokoun needed surgery to relieve his clotting problem and never played in the NHL again.

— with files from The Associated Press