<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Obviously something was wrong with Tamar Slay last season. He went from starter to spare part to "whatever happened to ... " on the Charlotte Bobcats' roster. Then he had surgery. The bruise he'd been playing with for three years proved to be a crack in his left anklebone the size of his thumbnail. That explains plenty, Slay said, about the pedestrian defense that dropped the forward out of the rotation. "Guarding these guys coming off screens where there's all that pushing and shoving, you've got to take off explosively. If you (hesitate) for one second, the guy is going to get open," Slay said. "There are a lot of things I couldn't do with this." Based on that injury report, the Bobcats will keep an open mind to bringing Slay back. The team didn't exercise the option on his contract. But it invited him to play in summer league, and if that goes well, he'd likely be in camp come October. Slay is being very conservative about testing his ankle, and you can hardly blame him. Since his rookie season with the New Jersey Nets (2002-03) he was told this was just a bruise and to tough it out. That approach made the injury progressively worse. Slay opened last preseason as a starter for the Bobcats, but by mid-December he was done. "When you're out there on the court, there are no excuses," Slay said. "But it's difficult playing when you've got a bad foot and you're thinking about it every time you make a cut, or you're running full-speed and have to stop on a dime." Now he's done letting others decide when he's healthy enough to play. "I'm not going to play in pain at all, because it affects my play," he said. "In this league, nobody cares (that you're hurt) so you've got to be at the top of your game."</div> Source
