Carmelo Anthony has a secret weapon in his sudden run of good health, which he has made a point of emphasizing in recent weeks as the rumors swirl before Thursday’s NBA trade deadline.
You can find the answer across the country: California-based physical therapist Drew Morcos, who said he added the 32-year-old Knicks star as a client this season as Anthony tries to ward off injury and keep his body fresh through his 14th pro season.
Morcos has implemented a special technique in his regular movement training with the 6-foot-8, 240-pound Anthony. Blood Flow Restriction (BFR) training, which originated in the United States with the military as a way to avoid amputation on injured soldiers, has been gaining popularity in the sports world over the past two years.
“It’s been around since the 1970s,” Morcos told The Post in a recent phone interview, “although it’s taken awhile to catch on as a recovery method from an athletic standpoint.”
Using a strap connected to Anthony’s upper thigh or shoulder, Morcos purposely cuts off oxygen circulation into that area while Anthony completes a routine exercise. (Anthony had left knee surgery in February 2015 and had experienced some subsequent tendinitis; he suffered a torn rotator cuff in his left shoulder in 2013, and in 2014, partially tore the labrum in his right shoulder, which he also hurt diving for a loose ball in December, causing him to miss his only game of the season, against the Warriors.) The athlete’s brain is tricked into believing he’s doing something more difficult than he is. The method helps increase the production of lactate and levels of protein synthesis in the targeted area, which allow the muscles to grow without damaging the joints and while avoiding the risks that come with weight lifting.
Morcos pointed to the Knicks’ quadruple-overtime loss to the Hawks on Jan. 29 as an example of a more durable Anthony. He led the Knicks with 45 points in 46 minutes, hitting clutch shots to force the first two overtimes before fouling out late in the second extra period.
“He has some spring back, he’s driving to the basket more aggressively and, most importantly, he’s able to play more minutes,” Morcos noted.
Anthony was first introduced to BFR last October on a recommendation from Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson.
“Carmelo and Russell are pretty good friends, so Carmelo texted him, like, ‘How are you able to get back and play without missing a game?’” Morcos said. “Carmelo had some lingering injuries and he wanted his body to be able to withstand an NBA season.”
Anthony raised some eyebrows recently when he talked up his health in consecutive postgame interviews, just days after trade chatter picked up regarding Anthony and the Cavaliers or Clippers.
“I’m feeling good,’’ Anthony said following a 26-point performance in a loss to the Wizards on Jan. 31. “My body is feeling good. Mentally, kind of just locking in, trying to block everything out and just play basketball.’’
Anthony isn’t the only high-profile athlete to benefit from “tourniquet” training. The Houston Texans, sitting in the backyard of the Brooke Army Medical Center, where physical therapist Johnny Owens introduced the technique after discovering Japanese bodybuilders using it for recovery purposes, were the first major pro sports team to implement it with their players in 2015.
Roughly 80 pro and college programs have since caught on, according to Ben Weatherford, who works with Owens at Owens Recovery Science in San Antonio. Weatherford cited Dwight Howard and his former team, the Houston Rockets, as a BFR success story: Limited to 41 games during the 2014-15 season due to knee cartilage problems, Howard averaged 32.1 minutes over 71 games the following season and is on pace for 75 games this season with the Hawks.
Morcos, whose clients also include Steelers wide receiver Antonio Brown, Sterling Shepard and Devon Kennard of the Giants, No. 30-ranked tennis player Steve Johnson and WWE’s Eva Marie, said he now flies to New York often for individual training sessions with Anthony. He paid a visit to Anthony’s apartment on Feb. 3 before the Knicks opened a difficult homestand against the Cavaliers, Lakers, Clippers, Nuggets and Spurs.
Anthony is averaging 17.2 second-half minutes this season, up from 16.7 last season. And he’s averaging 11.5 points in the second half and 5.7 points in overtime, up from last season’s averages of 10.1 and 3.0, another indicator of his conditioning despite his advancing age.
“He wants to do well, he wants to play well,” Morcos said. “He’s flying me out to help that cause. I think that says a lot for him to bring me out there and have me do extra work on his body.”
Morcos, 35, graduated from USC with a Physical Therapy degree in 2007. He worked at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles before landing a job at his alma mater as the Director of Rehabilitation.
“After five years, I decided it was time to move on, start my own business and take that leap of faith knowing what I can do as a clinician,” Morcos said about his personal practice, MOTUS, based in Newport Beach. “No one’s going to wake up from sleep and just have pain in their arm or their knee and not have any specific reason behind it, so I’m trying to be the private investigator to find out the cause of that pain.”
The turning point in Morcos’ entrepreneurial career came when he received a call from Wilson, one of the NFL’s best quarterbacks, in July 2015.
“I ended up working on [Wilson] for a week in LA and we meshed well together,” he said. “I helped him out a lot, so it just grew from there.”
Morcos now has visions of turning MOTUS into a national enterprise with clinics in closer proximity to his growing clientele. Jets quarterback Geno Smith, who will be a free agent, is spending this offseason in the apartment below Morcos’ training room while he recovers from ACL surgery.
In the free time he spends at home in Sandimas, Calif., Morcos never really leaves work. He and his wife, Sally, parents to 5-year-old Jacob and 3-year-old Emma, flip through games on their television while Morcos analyzes players’ injuries and celebrates his clients’ pain-free performances.
“I’ll be like, ‘Oh, there goes an injury,’ and she’s like, ‘Where? I didn’t see anything,’” he said. “And then it goes in slow motion and she’ll see it. When it becomes your field, you just try to be a perfectionist at catching it in real time.
“And when you see your players doing well, that’s the joy of it all, seeing the work you put in come to fruition.”