Dr. Kharrazi said this:
I presume they are going to try as best as they can to immobilize the tendon; give him whatever pain dampeners he will take; and see how it goes.
The media has decided series when the Lakers win are the historic ones. In the 70s when a New York team won, that was historic.
Again, that was a different injury in the 4th. He rolled his right ankle. That should be healed, based on how they were reacting post-game. It’s possible we’ll get 3rd/early 4th quarter KP, who looked about 85% or so. He had a pretty big block and was moving ok.
Amen. But not only does this deprive us of G1Q1 KP, it also moves our effective injury buffer back down to zero again. One more injury to a starter and we're asking Hauser/PP to log 40 min a game and then it gets really hard. Hopefully we close them out quickly and keep this boring.
That's what's so weird: I don't remember him limping at all or looking compromised until the other injury in the 4th. The same thing happened with Schilling as I recall: he seemed fine closing out G1 against the Angels and then suddenly was too hurt to pitch effectively in G1 against the Yanks.
Not true. Schilling hurt his ankle in the game 1 win over the Angels covering first on a grounder. He was visibly limping getting to first. Copilot says he continued to pitch. Not sure how long. Can’t find a video of him limping to first base.
Maybe this was discussed somewhere else and I missed it, but is there any reason to give him two additional days of rest by not playing him in G3 but on Friday in G4?
I have no medical expertise at all, but the gist I've gotten from reading commentary is that rest isn't going to help with this particular injury. Using the 'seatbelt' analogy: he's broken the seatbelt that holds the tendons in place... rest isn't going to help him grow a new seatbelt, only surgery is. As long as he can deal with the tendons popping around and can move well enough to benefit the team (unlikely in both cases), then he's probably free to give it a try. (Please jump in, Medically-Informed Person, if I have this wrong).
You're right– now it's all coming back. (I'd remembered that he hurt his foot covering a grounder in the Angels game but forgot there was any visible evidence of injury during that game.)
Yeah that "lateral movements" quote jumped out.
I think this is the part many are ignoring. Yes it is about pain threshold to be out there….but it is also about performance, not being a detriment and your teammates trusting you to be able to do what they expect out of you. There is more than the pain hurdle for Kristaps to jump here.
I mean it’s great that the players are wearing the Walton t-shirts and honoring Bill and all that…..but damn Kristaps, you don’t have to go so extreme in honoring Bill.
I was just replaying in my mind those awesome G1/G2 sequences where he caught the ball at the nail on switches and shot over shorter players. I can't imagine him doing the necessary jockeying for position required for those plays with limited lateral push-off (not to mention hunting down alley-oop lob passes and everything else required for him to be a better option than Horford and Kornet).
Again, though, he had this injury in the 3rd and was doing all this without it really being noticeable. The “separate” injury that took him out of the game is healed.
Because then a distracting media narrative would take place about how KP isn't able to play through a "simple ankle sprain", Shank and Felger and Mazz would be questioning his toughness, etc. Because of the unusual nature of this injury, it's probably best to be transparent.
I digress . . . Clyde's 36/7/19(!) (scored or assisted on 31 of Knicks 45 FGs) has always gotten short shrift in NBA Game 7 annals, but both in real time and over time, Frazier himself, Bradley, DeBusschere and Phil Jackson (who wasn't playing) said Reed's appearance and those two first hoops of the game juiced them (and the crowd) to levels they didn't think they had. It also wrecked Wilt's brain (1-11 FTs). He had 45 in Game 6 without Reed playing and thought he was going to skate again. Reed couldn't run or jump in his 25 or so minutes, but Wilt was pretty molasses-like by then, too.
Simmons called out Frazier's performance a few weeks ago as pushback against all the hyperbole being thrown Jalen Brunson's way ("best playoff performance in Knicks' history" blah blah). Was one of Simmons' few shining moments this postseason.
Yeah, I don't understand this part.
KP himself said he bumped kneed with Lively and felt it, so this is it, yes. I did notice him slow a bit, but I thought it was maybe post injury muscle fatigue since he was still moving pretty good and didn’t show any obvious outward signs of discomfort.
Yeah, he doesn't look 100% in those clips— particularly on the closeout on the KI 3-pointer, he seems to land uncertainly on his right leg. But of course, if he could somehow give us 15 minutes of that, we'd take it in a heartbeat.
I thought that at first, but I think he was just trying to avoid fouling Kyrie.
I normally wouldn't expect this of Joe, but I wonder if it's some tit-for-tat gamesmanship with Jason Kidd. The strangely detailed way they've discussed the injury could, as @lexrageorge put it, be getting ahead of a narrative that paints KP as "soft" for sure. But when coupled with Joe's uncharacteristic description of the injury as "serious," it could also be sort of the reverse of the Luka "injury" in that Joe expects Kristaps to play at least some and is looking to fuck with the Mavs' heads a bit. Joe's actual quote in response to a question that noted KP is day-to-day was, “It’s a serious injury. At the end of the day, the medical team is not going to put him in any bad situations. We’ve taken the decision to play out of his hands.” He could have just as easily said, "As you said, we're taking it day by day, and we'll see how he feels on Wednesday" and no one would've thought anything of it. I'm not sure this is what Joe is doing, but it's certainly plausible.
Of course, the best gamesmanship would be to invent the injury altogether. Maybe he's .... fine?
Has been discussed, verdict is: very unlikely to present additional health issues. Mostly a pain management thing, plus will he have enough mobility to be effective and not hurt the team.
Has also been discussed, verdict is: there's a mildly disturbing Slappy / Jason Kidd joke hiding in there someplace.
I’m not a doctor, of course, but I feel like this part hasn’t really been put into proper context by some of the Twitter types. I think he’s unlikely to injure the immediate area more because of the acute impact, but I find it hard to believe he’s not more susceptible to injury generally because he won’t be playing with the kind of movement and fluidity his body and brain are used to. Look at that 4th quarter injury, for example. He probably gets an easy rebound if fully healthy and doesn’t roll his right foot.
Yeah, a few of the doctors mentioned that he might not be able to move laterally or jump as well as he normally can, and that it will be awkward, which can in turn lead to a small increase in the chances he injures something else.
It’s probably how he hurt his calf, actually. Turned right ankle, Joe slow on the hook, and boom.
That’s probably true, but also true to some degree for a variety of other injuries players play with all the time.
I’m fervently hoping that he’s able to push through, but it seems like his lower extremities were designed by faberge and anything that messes with his kinesiology feels like a house of cards.
I would be optimistic about his ability to manage pain. He's thirsty for this title and the rest of the locker room is going to be on tilt. He was also along for the ride for the majority of the playoffs and I'm sure wants badly to contribute.
This just occurs with higher frequency in super tall (by NBA standards) guys. That's not to say that it's impossible as a 7'3"+ guy to have a long career, but it just seems like bigger guys get these foot/ankle things at higher rates. Knee stuff is equal-opportunity.
I'll continue hoping that the back half of his career looks like another 7'3 European center that was wracked with injuries for the first part of his career, then rebounded to average 74 games over his final 9 seasons while still being effective enough to make a couple of all-star teams:
My first thought too, but even if rest doesn't make it better, it could be a question of pain management and an increased chance of injuring something else. The Celtics don't NEED tonight's game, so we give him the day off and see again in a couple days. If the only thing that changes between now and game 4 (or 5) is that the Celtics odds of winning the title decrease, that could be enough for the team and player to risk him playing, even if nothing has changed with his personal situation.
Seems most likely done for the series to me also. Certainly not anything that is going to fix itself in a week. All the talk of taping/bracing never made any sense or was going to help.
