NBA All Star Duds Part 2
The NBA offseason continues to drag along as we travel through the dark heart of August. The only thing that is up is the temperature so we’re taking a cooling break and looking at NBA stars whose contribution is severely overrated when injuries are taken into account. Today, let’s start with one of my favorite players:
Kawhi Leonard. Great player, led my Raptors to a championship and gave everything he had to do it. But he’s only played 109 of a possible 237 games over the past 3 years and 178 games out of 401 games in the past 5 years. Clearly, it’s irresponsible to try and consider what the Clippers will be with Kawhi on it and even more so to try and predict how well they might do in the playoffs after the rigors of an 82 game season on his fragile body. Another year older, the odds are not in the Clippers favor that he will be available for the playoffs.
Paul George. While we’re speaking of the Clippers, George has only managed to play in 133 of the last 237 games, including only 31 games last season. Imagine the probability involved in both these stars making it to the playoffs healthy. I wouldn’t bet on that and I’ll bet if you do the math, you won’t either.
Zion Williamson. Zion might be one of the last people I would want to berate and I wish him nothing but the best, but, and it’s a big but, the young man has to stop being his own worst enemy. While nowhere near as fragile as Greg Oden, that is the shadow Zion is getting close to being covered by. No way you can predict his team’s success this season with him on it until he proves he can be on it for an extended period of time and that is looking more unlikely all the time.
Kristaps Porzingis. With only 102 games played out of the last 237, the once fabled unicorn has proven again to be just that, a fable. Thus far too fragile to make even a seasonal impact on any club, the less than mystical beast may or may not improve a lackluster Washington team this year, but again, the odds suggest not. In any case, each time he comes back from injury, he seems to come back less than he was before.
While these 4 and the previous 4 Duds fill the top shelf of the too injured to really be useful shelf, the 4 sitting on the next shelf down would include: Markelle Fultz, John Wall, Jimmy Butler and Bradley Beal. Sure, Fultz is too young and rarely factored into team predictions and John Wall is finally on a contract that fits the actual contribution he is going to make, but both still get too much airtime for worth. Butler and Beal? They need to win something in order to demonstrate they can be the pivotal piece on a winning squad. I won’t argue if you want Butler off this list, perhaps, but everyone else stays.
So let’s stop talking about these Duds as if they are going to make a meaningful contribution to their team’s championship chances. As in past years, what they’re going to give us is, ‘If only they’d remained healthy’.