John Delong of the Winston Salem-Journal reports: Jamal Mashburn recently found out that he had a rare injury to one of his abdominal muscles that would force him to miss at least two months and perhaps even the rest of the Charlotte Hornets' season.

As much as he hated hearing the news, though, he was also able to breathe a sigh of relief.

It turns out that while Mashburn was going from doctor to doctor trying to find out what was causing the pain in his abdomen, his gut was telling him that he might have cancer.

His mother was found to have colon cancer last year, and the longer his situation went undiagnosed, the greater his concern grew.

"It was difficult," Mashburn said recently. "My mother's situation definitely crossed my mind with her colon cancer, and I thought maybe I might be susceptible to that, too. So I went and had tests done for that. Anything that goes wrong in my pelvis area, my stomach area, I had to be deeply concerned.

"I'll admit, I was scared, not having any answers and having to go through MRIs and bone scans and things like that and nobody knowing what it really was."