Some of you are a laugh riot with the hand-wringing and garment-tearing.
Hurley has historically been very good with injury return projections. If he says Liam could be back in a few weeks 'if all goes well', then I am inclined to believe him-McN is already doing pool work (love the 'Aquaman' quip).
I do not think he would provide that timeline if it had not been informed by competent medical professionals. So if Dan says end of January, it's end of January.
To quote SVP:
'That's it, and that's all.' If you absolutely positively cannot deal with the prospect of the team losing a few contests in the interim then don't watch.
The kid's gonna miss 5-6 games. Not a damn thing any of us can do about it. The team is just going to have to collectively step up and fill in the blanks.
Lastly, while injuries always suck this one most definitely is NOT going to be the difference in making the En Cee Double Ays or winning the BET. Maybe we don't win the regular season trifecta but oh well who gives a damn that's a victory lap at this point.
All we need is to be fully and completely weaponized going in to March Madness. And then we'll be good, high seed or no.
Being a fan means worrying about your team when it is dealing with adversity. Liam was becoming the center piece of our team.
So this sucks for everyone. Probably most of all Liam. He won’t have as much time to showcase how good a player he is. For the team this means we now have to have Ross, Stewart and Mahaney play way better than they have been playing.
It also means that another piece maybe Nowell has to step in and fill minutes competently.
You call it hand wringing some might call it being more than a casual fan.
Just when we were starting to see what this team could become we now have to develop a whole different identity and then when Liam comes back figure out how he now can fit into whatever we become as a team over the next thirty days.
We can be optimistic and I am ok with thinking that this could be positive (and even hate saying that because under every circumstance it sucks for Liam) but only if the role players step up and do what Ball did last year when we lost Castle. But even Hurley said last year we had more answers and Steph was more defense at that point in the year.
Liam’s injury is more like losing Cam or Tristen last year and even then we still had answers,
Also on the optimistic side January is the best month for our team to pick to stink in. We have a history of turning bad January’s into great Februarys and even better March’s. So yes the season is not over but as a fan this stinks. For Liam it stinks. But for Nowell, Mahaney and Ross it might be the opportunity they needed to find the next level.
I am not including Stewart as I don’t see this changing his role much not meaning he won’t see more minutes but he was never going to be a ball handler on this team. He may slide over a play four on offense and let AK handle more but that is not AK best role.
Even before the injury Hurley said he had to find a way to get Ross playing well enough to play more than 20 minutes a game.
I think we have the talent to compete in everyone of our January games without Liam but in tight games when we need a play off the dribble Hass cannot be our only option. Ball and AK will have a more difficult time spotting up for open three or moving into them without Liam on the court.
I will stop my rant with this. I think we could get 17 points a game from Reed Jr and play him with Samson which could help hide Liam’s absence for certain stretches.
The whole purpose of a fan message board is to do exactly what we are doing when our best players who was just starting to peak and find his niche suffers a somewhat significant injury.
