NBA FORUM

Monday, June 10th

9:00 PM EST : Golden State ( 1.5 ) at Toronto ( -1.5 ) —- T: 214

Admin Note: The mod team is working to keep these daily threads more on topic – NBA strategy talk for today’s games. Post referring to yesterdays games will be moved to yesterdays NBA thread. Any off topic posts or posts containing full lineups will be deleted..

The NBA is in the forefront of the legalization of sports gambling. In order for them to offer the products they are planning, such as in game betting, they will need to be a hell of a lot more transparent on the injury front than they are now. It would have been nice to know for instance, approximately what percent of full capacity KD was operating on yesterday. It would be nice to know an hour before a game if someone is playing.

Now back to KD. I have no doubt that they all knew what they were dealing with from the outset. Everyone with a set of eyes who has ever seen an achilles injury knew what it was. Why lie to the public? Masquerading behind this mild calf strain bull puts undue pressure on the player. Mild calf strain sounds like a thing that will keep you out for maybe a week or two during the regular season, and maybe a couple of games in the playoffs. If they came right out and said that he had a strained achilles much of the public pressure on him to play would not have been there. Hell, even Steve Kerr was frustrated last week when he thought KD might be available for game four. So basically even if KD made the decision to ultimately play, I think there was a lot of undue pressure put on him from the onset by lying about the severity of the injury. If they didn’t lie about the injury, then the medical staff was incompetent which is then a different story.

I tend to agree with Charles here https://www.azcentral.com/story/sports/nba/warriors/2019/06/11/charles-barkley-warriors-should-shoulder-blame-on-kevin-durant-injury/1421485001/

keep in mind the people losing out on this are the Warriors, as now they’ll be paying top dollar for KD’s recovery

KD will take his option to remain with the Warriors

it’s not like other situations where a team pushes a guy to play in the postseason, he’s about to hit FA, and he has no option (in which case he could be losing out on a lot of money)

One of the most important early lessons I learned when I found myself in a management position was that no matter what the real reason was that I wanted to do something, I needed to find some way to pitch it that made it look like it was going to benefit the bottom line. If I had a really good reason that didn’t involve profit I might lead with it if I thought the boss I’d approached would be receptive, but I had to have a profit motive in my back pocket even then.

This time I can’t think of one; that makes it possible the wrong thing was done.

I don’t think of it as corruption; if you’re corporate it’s simply expected. Ultimately the law even requires it, if you’re running a public company. Of course you don’t commit crimes and you can plead professional responsibility (as with the physicians in a case like this), but beyond that, shareholder interests come first.

No, KD will still get a max offer. There were at least three teams reported today that would still offer him the max, but it would have to be an owner that was not worried about insurance on the deal.

The Warriors should actually offer KD the max, and tell him to sit out all of next year and rehab. The only problem with that, is the fact that GS is so far into the tax that they would be paying about double his salary when the luxury tax is factored in.

Seems unlikely that he’d still get a max offer with such an injury, but either way, it’s not like he’s going to be damaged financially by this decision.

If I were running an NBA franchise, I would certainly not offer the max to a 31 year old (he’s turning 31 at the start of the season) with a serious Achilles injury.

Boogie is obviously not the player KD is, but he’s two years younger and he wasn’t getting huge offers, which is why he opted to sign with GS for a season. His injury cost him a significant amount of money.

Windhorst thinks he might not. Makes sense too. There will likely be teams that will offer him the max, knowing they’ll only be getting him for 3 and not 4 years.

The salary cap is there to keep salaries artificially low. In an uncapped league what do you think a team would be willing to pay a healthy Durant? I’d guess around 60 to 100 million per year. So if they give him 4 for 160, and he plays for 3, then he’s getting roughly 53 mil a year, which would be less than fair market value.

So it might be in a teams best interest to offer Durant that now, IF they believe he can be the player he was before the injury.

right, but the problem is you have no way of knowing if he’ll be the player he was.

Huge gamble, even if you write off the first season.

He is one of the top three players in the league. There are tons of max slots available, and flailing teams like the Knicks would still offer the max to land a talent like KD, even if they had to wait a year. It is also now in KD’s best interest to take a max from someone, now that he is damaged goods.

I saw some stats today that basically say the average player coming back from an Achilles injury is about 7% less effective than before the injury. A 93% KD is still a max player in this league.
I think there is also less risk with a player like KD than one like Boogie. KD is a pure shooter, and he will be able to adjust his game if necessary. He will be hitting three pointers in 50 years from his wheelchair.

Hell, if KD wouldn’t have tried to drive and plant hard and just play jump shooter like he began the game, he may not have gotten hurt again in the first place.

Not doubting that you read that, yet I don’t see how someone can Accurately measure that…7% why not 8%, or 12 or 5?

Also….did you know that 78% of all statistics are made up on the spot 🤔😉😁😎

Absolutely this!

If they don’t show up on KD’s doorstep with the 5-year max contract in hand, I’ll be very disappointed.

of course it’s in KD’s best interest to take a max deal, if one is offered

I had assumed he would not be offered the max, which is why I figured he’d just take his player option and then hit free agency in a year after spending next season recovering and rehabbing.

KD and Paul Pierce, shooting threes from their wheelchairs

they didn’t lie – the achilles tendon is a Subset of the calf.

knowingly misleading – yes.

why? KD is a free agent – call 1st tear one on achilles would cost him up to $100 mill in the FA market.
now its cost him next season

Yes they did – they called it a mild calf strain repeatedly. The achilles may be a subset of the calf, which is also a subset of the leg, which is also a subset of the lower body, etc.

They should have just ruled him out for the season initially when it happened, just like they did when Boogie had is quad tear. Let him rehabilitate in peace with no expectation that he was coming back, and if he rehabs faster than expected like Boogie did, then you put a possible timetable on it.

KD probably won’t lose a dime on the free agent market because of this injury.

I blame Kerr, you can’t have KD on the court for 12 of the first 14 mins of the game playing through a “calf” injury. I dont know what Kerr considers short bursts but that isn’t it

ok, we just have a different definition of “lie”

but I agree – they should have emphasized the achillies tendon, that way it would have eased the social media pressure that KD lives off

I agree with this and I don’t think there’s much of a question about it.

He came back because it was an elimination game. If GS was up 3-1 rather than down 3-1, there’s no way in hell KD plays Game 5.

Yes. It is not uncommon for guys to be medically cleared and still sit out, whether it’s because they don’t want to play basketball (Derrick Rose) or because the coach feels the game in question is not important enough to risk it, or for other reasons.

And I agree with you that the team lying about the injury is what created the pressure to play. The claimed injury has a much shorter recovery than what really happened. A “mild calf strain” doesn’t keep you out for a month. The media and public took the team at its word, that it was a mild calf strain, and that created lots of comments, stories and tweets about how KD should return, etc.

With regard to whether it was lying or not:

No one refers to an Achilles injury as a “mild calf strain”, so the team flat out lied if he indeed had hurt his Achilles. If they said he had a ‘lower body injury’ (in the NHL, every injury is either upper body or lower body), that would’ve been vague, but not lying. This was lying.

For FD

Kawhi has been in every winning LU so far (3x’s as the MVP). There’s lock #1

Iggy has not been in a winning LU yet. However, he’s been hitting mid 20’s all series. It’s an elimination game, at home, and he’s clutch in the playoffs. There’s lock #2

Correct me if I’m wrong… Is the popular theory that the first injury was a small tear and he completely tore monday night?

true

by “no one” you mean the general public that do not use concise medical terms in their vocabulary then yes.

I think they used the term “calf” to obfuscate, to try and out-wit the competition and for KD’s benefit in free agency…..

….. well, IT BACKFIRED

That seems to be the popular theory here at Conspiracy Central.
My alternate theory is that his first injury was indeed a calf strain, but the team misjudged the severity of it. I submit it was actually a Grade 2 calf strain, which requires 4-6 weeks of recovery time. Supporting evidence for this theory is that KD has had mild calf strains before, but he said that this one was worse than his previous ones. Also, I’ve read that the team was targeting a Game 5 return from the beginning. I have no explanation for why the team didn’t just come out and say that once they realized it wasn’t just a Grade 1 strain.
I further theorize that his current Achilles injury is in fact a new injury, as Bob Myers said. Once you have a calf injury, you are at risk of an Achilles injury because of compensation for the weakened calf muscle. More weight is put on the heel when the calf can’t be used properly. We’ve seen plenty of examples of players suffering a second lower body injury due to compensation for an earlier lower body injury. In fact, I remember hearing that Kawhi’s current knee injury is a result of his compensating for his earlier quad injury.

TL;DR Rather than this being a grand conspiracy involving the entire organization to keep an Achilles injury a secret from everyone, including KD’s teammates, the team simply blew the original diagnosis.and for some reason didn’t want to admit it. Then, the doctors and training staff judged the original calf injury sufficiently healed to play on it. His current Achilles injury is a result of compensation for his calf muscle that was weakened due to the original strain.

Edit: Just found this article that seems to support my alternate theory
https://www.nbcsports.com/philadelphia/nba-insider-tom-haberstroh/kevin-durants-achilles-casts-cloud-over-warriors-present-and-future
“The calf is not an isolated muscle but a dynamic muscle complex,” Stotts wrote. “Playing through a strained calf can increase the chances of a secondary injury occurring somewhere else along the kinetic chain.”