Eric Gordon is out with a torn labrum that he suffered in the New Orleans Pelicans’ win Saturday night against the Utah Jazz. The injury was discovered after Gordon had an MRI earlier this week. The team said “Gordon will undergo further evaluation throughout this week by the team’s medical staff to determine the best course of action moving forward.”

Gordon has been injury prone since joining New Orleans, with lingering knee and ankle issues.This is not a related injury, and comes during one of the healthiest spans of Gordon’s New Orleans’ career.

Labral tears are much more common in baseball pitchers that basketball players, though they have been surfacing recently, usually due to subluxation or dislocation of the shoulder, like with what happened to Gordon. The main question when it comes to recovery time is whether the injury requires surgery. When Dwight Howard had the injury in his amazing Los Angeles Lakers’ season, he missed a mere six games and avoided surgery. In an instance which required surgery, at the time Orlando Magic point guard Jameer Nelson tore his labrum in his right shoulder. Nelson, who was expected to miss the entire season with the injury, came back after three-and-a-half months to start in the NBA Finals, and struggled mightily. Of potential good news, the New Orleans medical staff has a history of rehabbing labral tears without surgery. In December of the 2012-2013 season, Jason Smith tore his right labrum, and after two weeks of rehab was able to return (though he suffered a setback in late February which cost him the remainder of that season).

Gordon was averaging 9.5 points per game and has a PER of 8.98 at the time of his injury. He was in the middle of his best stretch of the season, averaging 12 points per game, shooting 57.1% from the field, and 58.8% from beyond the arc over the last five games.

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