Nah, this isnt true. There is no way a dude coming straight off a dislocated shoulder was every gonna perform up to snuff especially in the middle of the WCF against the Warriors. A lot of metrics that season had him as one of the most valuable guys on our team. Yea i have no idea why people are scoffing at this, its the definition of a low risk high reward move. If he decides to take the minimum we should absolutely go for him. I would love to have him here. If he gets back to form, thats game changing for us.
I could be wrong but I’m pretty sure he was back by the end of the Utah series. And he definitely said at one point his shoulder was fine but it was more a mental thing. Now by that he meant mental related to coming off injury but either way, that’s enough for me to not trust him. But who knows
Yea he came back game 5, had limited playing time and was thrown into the Warriors series. There is no way a dude who by most metrics was one of our most valuable players would perform like that otherwise. When you miss significant time with an injury like that and are thrown into the playoffs , you arent going to perform well. And honestly he was coming up on a contract year looking to get paid, so that also played a part as well. Wether it was because of rust(or not fully being recovered) or wether it was mental, all of it was most exclusively cause by that shoulder injury.
Sure playing in the intense NBA Playoffs with a partially torn and instable shoulder is easy anybody can do it.
I also recall us not losing a step when he missed games in the regular season. I get it, our numbers were great with him on the floor, not trying to be devils advocate. But that could simply be because we were simply a very good team. I’d rather not use roster spots on guys that who last played was over a year ago and was a horrible playoff performance (be it injuries or not). But again, I don’t exactly know who those roster spots go to.
Our team was better with him on the floor, thats the thing, even better than with Ariza on the floor. Why not? Its low risk high reward situation. Minimum signing my man, and if it works out, it could be super amazing. Like he was that good when he was here, just my opinion haha. And if not...thats fine too, like who are we gonna get for a minimum sighing?
His defense aone is game changing for the playoffs I dont care about his offense as much. If he can shoot 35% from 3, we are good to go.