Knee soreness for the past week. I just realized Ennis was also out for the Nets game. Haha. That's why I put "unplayable" next to the salary total. Sigh.... Melo.
Wow. That was depressing. Pretty grim outlook. I too have that fantasy that we will go into the playoffs in shape, healthy and with great chemistry lol. It’s the fan in me. I can admit that. I have to believe that somehow we will be healthy leading into March. I agree that management should do something, but outside of trading EG what else can they do? If the Luxury tax is that much of a concern then Morey is in a tight spot. I can’t believe I’m saying this but we may have to roll with what we currently have. So here’s to our guys getting enough rest and rehab to be ready to make a playoff push. Maybe they will surprise you.
Yea it amazes me how over a decade i hear „bad luck with injuries”... if you bring injury prone players then they get injuries. There is a reason why Harden and PJ are durable yet CP and EG are not. Tmac had bad back prior to his arrival here. Luc had his history too. Knight had torn ACL. I mean the list goes on and on
You can rationalize every individual instance; all teams with injury problems do. There is no bad luck in what's happened to the oldest team in the league. Paul is the oldest key rotation player. This whole team is old. We are on average one of the oldest overall and if you compare our core players to the average age of other teams' cores, still the same. In fact, Paul's injuries are not as age related as everyone else - he's been having these problems for 10 years and showed up in worse shape this season than he was last season. Take away our fanhood for a moment. On an exam you're asked: the oldest team in the league has to overplay its players and has a coach that eliminates practice time while ramping up player minutes (in comparison with other coaches). Is this team going to get injured more than most, about average or less than most? I don't mean to be negative, but I am so disappointed in the organization for being so dumb. What makes it more irritating is the fact that this is supposed to be a data-driven organization. It's not bad luck or an anomaly. Even if we managed our minutes to the average, we should be getting injured more than the average. But we are compounding the problem with overextended minutes. I've said so many times, we're not looking like we can beat the Warriors in a series, and it's not worth risking Harden's hamstring over that. Harden is this team's motor for the next few years. Hey I'm with you man. I've been in that boat where I thought we're unlucky and felt bad when things didn't pick up end of season. But we got to be realistic about what are the problems in our control and which ones are not. If we operate this team the same way we've been doing, the same thing will keep happening. That's not bad luck at all. The reason we're in this situation is we're not willing to outspend the team we're trying to beat, and we're starting with a handicap of $20m in non-performing contracts. What's going to be the realistic outcome of that confrontation? However, I do believe Morey can out-GM the Warriors and MDA can out-coach Kerr if the gap was reasonable. We're in this situation because of the Ryno contract. For the gap between us and the Warriors to become reasonable we have to give up something of value. Our only option is taking a risk and giving up future assets. They need to dump Knight/Gordon and pick(s) and then coach this team such that they can win at a contender rate without overexerting the players. A team that's going 120% all regular season is not going to beat a Warriors team that's coasting to 55+ wins. Realistically, if we had the team to beat the Warriors, we would be able to win at least 6 of each 10 games without playing Harden more than 32 minutes. We haven't been there. We've been winning in free-fall panic mode, and that's definitely something to take pride in, but that's not what being a threat to the Warriors looks like.
I'm at a point with these injuries where I'm just looking for some kind of help by way of trade. If we can get some actual NBA players to fill out this roster, tread water until we get healthy, and go into the playoffs with last year's hunger, I think we have as good a chance as we'll ever have to win a championship. Even after playing a full slate of games with D-League players and street free agents, the league hasn't passed us by. Harden has risen to a level I don't think we've seen since Kobe or MJ, and that could be the best thing to ever happen to this team. With Harden KNOWING that he's an all-time great, that level of unprecedented confidence might be what propels us into a championship.
Knight and Paul (55 million a year) is not manageable. They are well-known injury-prone players, but Gordon (15M a year) is manageable. MDA needs to cut his PT. Knight wont be traded before July 20 because teams want better free agents than Knight. There will be a lot of negotiation with Rivers and House for new contracts. These rosters are/will be expensive: Paul, Knight and Gordon (70M) and Rivers (new payroll 8M projected) House and new MLE player (new payroll 10M projected) Still have 3 roster spots.
Come on man, bringing in old war vets and wounded wariors to fight your battle and sending off all your young healthy trained recruits to fight other people's battles is why this is what it is. Other than Clint's accident, its not really that crazy.
Our bench is largely disabled but their absence isn't really critical, not good anyway. It is pretty much Harden going one on five.
Just imagine what Tillman and Morey would've considered doing come trade deadline if Harden wasn't putting up dem numbers... 115 points in 2 games >>> $80.4 million
But we have lost half our games lately, so we are not gaining any ground. If anything it shows we need more help.
I think as long as we stay afloat, it'll be hard to place that expectation on Harden and the team to win out without key starters. I'm just saying that, if we were still #14 in the West standings at this point, it would be likely that there would have been major overhauls to either the players or management. I'm just thankful we're not in that place right now, largely thanks to Harden and co.
If I did my math right on the 17 current players on our roster then we are 27.8 years old on average. Didn’t fact check it, but I will assume it’s all correct. But check out this reddit post and draw your own conclusions on if we are too old or not.
I thought Ennis cut his leg after falling off a ladder at his house and so is also out with an injury? Thats why he was a DNP vs the Nets
8-man rotations are too old (average 31?) and unplayable players are too young (average 21?) Tucker Green Paul Nene Gordon (age 30 look like 35, overweight?) Harden Melo Unplayable Isaiah Hartenstein 20 Chriss 21 Vincent Edwards 22
