Roy made it clear that Jensen's advice is to monitor his minutes. "Who's decision it is" boils down to who's voice is most important, and that may well be Roy's. Perhaps it is McMillan's. In pretty much no sports franchise is it the head of the training or medical staff. Blaming Jensen (and maybe you're not...saying that the national media will is ambiguous as to where you, personally, stand) for giving advice to be cautious and then being ignored because Roy wants to let it rip is not reasonable, IMO.
Actually it is a ploy by Roy to help the Blazers. He is thinking that if he puts together some really good games (that All-Star form) that both the demand for him and his market value will rise and the Blazers will be able to get the best value for their damaged goods. He really wants to help his Blazers as much as possible and feels that, long term, the best way is to get himself into a position where a Roy for CP3 trade become highly desired by all parties involved. Gramps...
As someone with Brandon's issue in one of my knees, I will tell you that the body's natural reaction to bone-on-bone is to produce fluid in the joint if it gets overworked. You can let it reabsorb over a few days, or you can put a needle in your knee that looks like a Cajun Flavor Injector for a turkey and drain it.
BTW, the minute restriction issue tells me his current level of play is likely the best we can expect from him.
Yeah, it's true...Camby really did get all those points and rebounds. Not a scoring error. I can understand your skepticism if you didn't get to see the game!
It is McMillan's call and he has to factor in the advice from Jay Jensen. Pretty simple. Jay needs to let him know it's not a good idea because it isn't. What Roy thinks isn't really that important because of course he's going to say he wants to play. It's Jay's job to keep Roy from hurting himself. I saw something earlier that even though Manu said he was good to go for the playoffs Gregg Popovich wouldn't play him at the advice of the trainers and also because it's just not worth it. Smart people. IMO I can place blame on Jensen. He knows Roy's condition and if he lets Roy dictate if/when he plays then that's just a shame. Jay may not get the final call but he can certainly tell McMillan not to listen to Roy. Jensen needs to step up and do his best to squash this and not just accept it. I still don't like the way Roy was able to convince the training staff that he was able to play. Again it's not their call but the team(PA,KP,Nate,etc) is certainly going to decide whether Roy should based on Jay's and the training staff's opinion and not Roy's. The training staff is there to protect the players and imo they didn't do that last season in the playoffs and are possibly doing the same thing again. With that said we can just agree to disagree because I don't care to go on with this as I feel pretty strongly in my position.
Sounds like you're determined to blame Jensen no matter what. You agree that McMillan has final decision, but it's still Jensen's fault. And I was hardly advocating that Roy be the decision-maker for the team. But if that's what the team gives him, I still don't see what Jensen's blame is. Of course, it still remains to be seen whether Roy even does need to have his minutes controlled. It may be that he can do no further damage to his knees and it's just whatever he can take, pain-wise. In which case, it makes complete sense to leave it up to Roy. Since medical/training staffs never get to make the final decisions, I don't see any merit to evaluating them by the final decisions made. They should be evaluated by the advice they give to the decision-makers, which is something we, as fans, have no access to generally.
I was at the game and saw Camby score all of his points and grab all of his rebounds. But the player of the game was Brandon Roy who could not miss and then nailed THE shot to win the game. Camby was awesome no doubt but Brandon had a direct hand in over 40% of the offense. Was his best game of the year. He ain't dead, guys.
