With Giannis unfortunate injury, the Hawks should be smart with how they proceed with Trae Young’s injury. They shouldn’t rush him until he’s ready.
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It’s the ultimate Ewing theory year, or something. All four of the final teams have now had their best player miss significant playing time.
Hard not to see this as pretty significant evidence that overplaying players gets them hurt. I mean, Lebron was making that point like two or three weeks ago, and now even more guys are going down. Really unfortunate. The NBA will never, ever be able to stop the practice of resting stars on back-to-backs now, and just maybe there will be a push to shorten the season.
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Trae Young and Giannis injuries has nothing to do with LBJ’s point. It just happen to be an unfortunate injuries that aren’t related to overuse.
NBA won’t entertain shortening the season because of loss of revenue. See NFL keeps adding games despite the player’s protests as an example.
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Most injuries aren’t directly attributable to overuse, and yet…
The NBA owners won’t want to shorten. It would take the players deciding to take less money. Not likely to happen, but I could definitely see it taking up space at the CBA negotiating table.
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I agree…I am sick of blaming load management for every injury. Trae stepped on the refs foot! Chris Paul had Covid! Kawhi hurt his knee. Giannis hyper extended his.
Harden with a soft tissue injury is fair…
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Acute incidents that happen a lot in games suddenly causing more severe injuries than usual should lead you back to a lack of rest making those tissues more vulnerable than usual. Heck, biomechanics experts think it’s very plausible that having less grip on a baseball can significantly increase injury risk.
I’m not necessarily sure that this leads to the season needing to be shortened though? This wasn’t at all a normal season. It’s just a matter of whether or not the typical number of injuries in the playoffs is okay. And obviously Lebron and most stars care a lot more about the playoffs vs. the regular season compared to the median player. Also, he can easily take the hit to his salary that I believe would’ve come from shortening this season even further?
An 82 game season isn’t a horrible grind when there’s a season from late Oct to early Apr. LeBron is pandering to people that love him and love the brand. He’s been off for a month now and he’s getting his rest as he needs and won’t be playing another competitive game until late Oct. Kawhi has been doing load management for the last couple years I don’t see how his injury was due to so many games played.
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Really hyped for tonight’s pivotal game 5 between the Hawks without Trae and the Bucks without Giannis.
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It wasn’t dramatic. Brook Lopez had a very nice game, though.
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Looks like Middleton is shooting the Bucks into the Finals. Giannis is on his feet celebrating. Hope he can play soon.
Suns vs. Bucks finals. Interesting matchup but the Suns are an overall better team IMO.
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I think if Giannis is healthy that the Bucks will take it. However, I don’t think that will be the case.
This has been the most-injured playoffs that I can recall. The Suns may run to a championship by beating the Lakers without a healthy Davis and LeBron, the Nuggets without Jamal Murray, the Clippers without Kawhi, and the Bucks without Giannis. Pretty crazy but that’s how it plays out sometimes.
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I think the Bucks without Giannis are still pretty dangerous because they all play their natural roles and don’t defer to him. The funny thing about Giannis is that he’s a great player but he’s a bit miscast as the ball dominant scorer. So without him you have Holliday with a larger role, Lopez reminding people he can dominate in the post, and Middleton being a scorer.
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I’ll be rooting for the Suns and do expect them to win. I love the backcourt of Paul and Booker
If you missed detailed game previews since the end of college basketball, here’s a nice preview of the Finals.
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The Bucks had no answers to the CP3/Book punishing the switches. They can’t do drop coverage they like to do all year long because CP3 knows how to punish the drop coverage. It’s going to be interesting to see how the Bucks will respond on defense on game 2.
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Bucks played a pretty awful game. I’m a little worried about Lopez being down in a stance all game but I’m pretty confident they will play better next game even w the same game plan. Giannis was not very good, understandably, especially on D where he gave up a number of threes (at least twice as he cheated to help on pick and roll u are rightly pointing out is a problem). Unclear how much better he can play. But rest of team seems like to have a better game two, I think.
Team did make 16 threes at 44%…that part can def be worse.
Wow. Didn’t realize that. Fair point.
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This makes me upset the Pistons passed on Booker. If I’m Detroit I try to break the bank to bring him home every time he’s a restricted/unrestricted free agent.
Booker is probably one of the few true potential superstars who would actually be seriously interested in playing for Detroit.
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