He took a charge and cracked a rib during his redshirt year at Iowa. He played his whole redshirt freshman season for the
Hawkeyes on a bum ankle, then found out he had a Jones fracture in his right foot that required offseason surgery. He battled plantar fasciitis — ligament inflammation that causes an unrelenting, stabbing sensation — in his left foot throughout his redshirt sophomore season, which meant he rarely practiced and had to sit out four games.
Then something wonderful happened after he transferred home to Kentucky last summer. Fredrick briefly experienced relief. For a few glorious weeks, nothing hurt. He started shedding extra weight and getting back into shape and imagining what it would be like to play at Rupp again, this time for the home team. But shortly after his 22nd birthday, in the middle of July, he noticed a small bump on his left shin. It ached a little, but after all he’d been through it didn’t seem like much. Just to be sure, Fredrick mentioned it to the team trainer. Just to be safe, the trainer ordered an X-ray. You’ll never guess what happened next.
Stress fracture. Surgery required. Fredrick needed a metal rod in his leg and about four months to recover.
“That was really frustrating, because I was just starting to get my body right and figure out what my role was going to be on the team, and I came in wanting to really hit the ground and show what I could do,” Fredrick says. “That’s one of those injuries that you can take the risk and not do anything with it, but then, remember what happened to Kevin Ware? (In a gruesome scene, the former
Louisville guard snapped his leg during a 2013 NCAA Tournament game.) That’s what can happen. So when the doctor said that, it was a no-brainer to get the surgery. And I’ve had no problems with it since.”
He was a man on a mission in rehab, hell-bent on getting back before the Wildcats’ season started. And he succeeded. He won the 3-point shooting contest at Big Blue Madness and was cleared for a full return to practice about a month before the Champions Classic opener against
Duke at MSG. His first day back, though, Fredrick felt a tug in his left hamstring. He tried to shake it off, until he couldn’t. Defending teammate
Kellan Grady, Fredrick planted his left leg to change directions and crumpled to the court. It was only a minor strain, but that meant he was shut down for three more weeks. One last clearance came in the days before Kentucky traveled to New York.
On the eve of that first game, Fredrick had barely practiced, but he felt good, and his stroke looked great, and coach John Calipari told him, “Hey, if I need you, be ready.” In the tunnel pregame, adrenaline kicked in. Fredrick sprung up off the floor at the Garden and dunked with ease his first time through the layup line. No problem, no pain.
“The second time, though, I knew it was bad,” Fredrick says. “I went up to dunk again and felt everything in my leg rip. It immediately started to burn. I kind of hung on the rim for a minute, because I was scared to get down.”
When he eventually landed and hobbled to the bench, however, he made a bold choice. He kept his latest injury to himself, not realizing — or maybe just not accepting — how severe it was. As the game wore on, the
Blue Devils pulled ahead and Kentucky struggled to make an outside shot, Calipari began pacing the sideline and scanning his bench for answers.
“I was thinking, ‘Please don’t put me in. Please don’t put me in,’” Fredrick says. “I would’ve just collapsed if he had. Every timeout, I could barely get up and walk.”
Still, he didn’t tell anyone what happened. He prayed that this was just a tweak, that this latest injury felt worse than it really was. But by the time the team plane landed back in Lexington, around 2 a.m., Fredrick’s left thigh had swollen so much it was nearly double in size. The back of his leg was black and blue. Even then, he didn’t alert Kentucky’s training staff or the coaches. He tried instead to go to bed.
“I was laying there with some of the worst pain I’ve ever had,” he says. “My leg was throbbing. I woke up Kellan (Grady), my roommate, and said, ‘Bro, you gotta take me to the hospital, because this is terrible.’ I didn’t want to call our trainer, Geoff (Staton), at that point, because I didn’t think he’d be awake. God love Geoff, though, he came over at like 6 a.m. on basically no sleep and told the hospital, ‘We’ll take it from here.’ When the team doctor got there, he examined me, and I could tell on his face something was not right. I said, ‘Be honest. Is it bad?’ He said, ‘Yeah, it’s pretty bad.’”
Fredrick’s left hamstring had completely snapped on that second pregame dunk attempt at Madison Square Garden, the muscle pulling away from the bone and recoiling all the way back up to his buttocks. A surgeon had to retrieve it, unroll it and reattach it. Post-op, Fredrick was fitted for a brace that locked his left leg in place from ankle to hip. For the two months he wore it — the first month, even when he slept — he couldn’t bend that leg an inch. That was miserable, but folks around Fredrick worried more about the mental toll. How would he handle yet another injury disrupting his basketball career?
“When I had the first surgery on my leg, I was asking, ‘Why me? I do everything right, work so hard, love basketball. I don’t understand why this is happening to me,’” Fredrick says. “But it’s weird, when the hamstring injury happened, my mindset just totally changed. I called my parents, and we cried over the phone for a little bit, then I told them when I hung up, ‘There’s no more crying, no more negativity. From this point forward, I’m going to be positive.’ I told my teammates what happened and hugged Coach Cal and told him I was sorry, because I felt like I could really help the team. But I also told them, ‘I promise you I’m going to help you win games next year.’ After that injury, I would not let anyone be negative with me, told people I did not want, ‘I feel bad for you,’ none of that. Something just clicked in my head: I’m going to turn this into a positive.”
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