CJ McCollum has played the last three games with a back injury, a fractured vertebra that has not kept him out of action, but may be hampering his play. Dwight Jaynes of NBCSports Northwest quotes unnamed sources saying the Trail Blazers guard “has been playing with a L3 vertebral transverse process fracture (non-displaced) since last Thursday”.
Spinalcord.com describes the L3 vertebra as part of a group in the lumbar spine area and cites symptoms of an L3 injury as follows:
This is the middle vertebra of the lumbar spine, and the first vertebra to not contain a section of the spinal cord.