I really don't know. How soon can you be any kind of semblance of NBA playing time ready after getting the Germany knee treatment? That was quite recent, right? OK just smacked myself and affirmed I AM glass half full guy and of course this is good news. Clarkson will have a chance to see what he can do. Then again if Price can gut it out with the pain from the knee bone bruise and play 80-90% of himself, Lin is certainly capable of near 40 minutes give or take. That's the upper end of what Byron is talking about for 36 year old Bryant.
I say he plays because if he doesnt that means a SOLID ammount of minutes for Lin,Kobe and Clark. UNLESS they go with a bigger lineup and use Randle guarding the other teams SF with say Boozer/Hill/Davis playing most of the PF/C minutes. If im not mistaken, theres no ACTUAL positions in the Princeton base offense which means it really doesnt matter whose the "PG", "SG", "SF", correct? Could be wrong but thats my understanding of it.
Wait, how did he go from his career possibly being in jeopardy, to being available to play tonight? I'm happy about the news, but still a little worried.
If he's almost he's ready to go tonight that's great. Even if he can't play, just being almost ready means that he will be playing soon, excellent. He shouldn't rush back just to injure himself in season opener though. That being said, I'm going to say something really harsh. If he gets injured again, they need to get rid of him. We don't really need another Nash on our hands.
I don't want to rush him into a game but we might need him. Our wing players are gonna get too many fouls called on them.
^^ I'll disagree. I was glad to see him out there for us. The rust was obvious, but the guy hasn't played NBA ball in months. He'll shake it off. Nice to seem him back.
It was nice to see him back on the court... until he started playing like a jerk and missing everything. I don't know if he was frustrated at himself, at his teammates, at his coaches, the refs, or the opponents but he played terribly. He cost us a couple of big missed layups that really could have changed the tone of the game. He didn't feed the post once to Julius and I don't know why. He was a non-factor defensively. I already mentioned it, but his missed shots were so bad they were jarring for the flow of our team. I know he hasn't played so I'll give him a one game pass, but I didn't like his attitude on the floor either.
first 3 shots: missed wide open layup (left hand), airball corner 3, missed wide open layup at the buzzer (left hand)
He looked bad out there, but I attribute that to rust. I think he'll be ok after he goes through a few practices and gets his timing back.
Man, everyone's so critical of him. This is his first game he's played in with real completion, not even practice, in forever. It was just magnified because our team is so weak he couldn't hide behind some of the other players and slowly get into the flow of the game, pick his shots here and there. Give him a break. I doubt he'll even be up to his normal play within a week, say nothing for one game.
He hasn't played NBA ball in freakin forever, he's going to need time. He's going to get it too, just hope he stays healthy.
He looked like garbage from what I saw, but that's not his fault. He literally hadn't played basketball since April. He hasn't played yet tonight, and that might be good, but he's going to get minutes this season.
I'm harder on him for his attitude than his performance. I get that he hasn't played in a long time, but missing layups? That's just bad concentration. I'm not asking him to drive to the rim and lay it up in traffic, just make a wide open layup though. And when guys are in post position, feed them the ball and cut like you're supposed to!
