I've had it before - luckily it hasn't come back.
The plantar fascia is a very tough tissue that fans out from your heel to the ball of your foot. Its kinda like a tendon, but I don't think it's actually categorized as one. It provides tension to the bones of your foot, sort of like a spring, or the bow string of a bow that bends the bow. But its shaped more like a fan, spreading out towards each of your toes at the ball of your foot.
It is very tough, and it is living tissue, but when torn or strained it is very slow to heal due to very little blood flow within it. When people engage in heavy exertion that requires them to jump up and down a lot, or apply heavy force to their feet, like stomping, they can tear the plantar fascia from its moorings to the bones of your feet. Also it can happen when you bend your foot sharply and suddenly, like you're lunging forward and the back foot stays back and bends your toes toward the top of your foot as you stretch forward. This is a very common occurrence with basketball players as should be expected, with all the leaping they do on hard court surfaces.
When your plantar fascia is pulled from its moorings to the bone, the bone tissue of your foot can often grow outwards towards the plantar fascia, in order to better anchor and secure the tissue. Tiny bony outgrowths that look like burrs or bumps. This is what "bone spurs" are, and they can be very painful, and often require corrective surgery to shave down the bone outgrowths and surgically anchor the plantar fascia back to the regular bone tissue. But mostly people get confused if the pain actually comes from bone spurs, or the actual tear of the plantar fascia from the bone. Tears of the plantar fascia most often occur towards the heel of the foot, as the fanning out of the tissue towards the ball of the foot better helps the tissue support heavy impacts and stretching there, while at the heel the tissue is more concentrated to one area. But tears can happen anywhere with the tissue, depending on how traumatic the impact to the foot can be.
When I had it, I visited a doctor who got me some orthotics, little rubber heel inserts that helped cushion the impact of my foot when I walked. He also suggested taking a used 2 liter bottle of soda, fill it with water, and freeze it in the freezer. Then use a towel on the floor, and roll the frozen bottle of water under my effected foot front and back while I watched TV or did other sitting-down chores. I could also take a bottle - not frozen but filled with water - into the shower and roll my foot on it while I showered. Other cylindrical objects like wooden sticks or short poles are good, but the ice aspect can help with inflammation to your foot, and lessen the pain.
The pain is most difficult when you're still for long periods of time, such as sleeping at night. When I had it, I would wake up to go to work, and actually fell down on the floor getting out of bed, the pain of stepping on the foot was so bad. Also driving to work - which was a 30-minute drive each way - or longer drives to Myrtle Beach would have me limping pretty badly once I got out of the car.
Once you get an object to work your foot on, be sure to roll your toes toward the ball/cylinder as you roll it under your feet.....
