Read up a little on Calf muscle strains. These strains at this level take anywhere from a week to 6 weeks to fully recover from. I would not be surprised in the least that they hold him out 2-3 weeks at this point? Now for my opinion. I agree this is the perfect time to hold him out and get him healthy. Perfect time to give some minutes to Sharp. Possibly get Payton back and find some minutes for him as well.
I won't be surprised if Dame is out until the first of the year. Which just makes the Payton situation even more aggravating.
Yeah, damn that Payton! they should've signed someone else who...wouldn't be a guard and not really helpful if your best player is out?
Yeah, they need to let him heal all the way this time. I mean I know it's a different part of his calf this time, but maybe not letting the other part completely heal compromised the rest of his calf. Sharpe definitely going to get minutes. Payton will be back before Dame gets back probably. But, he's still out a couple weeks himself because of intermittent soreness. These multiple calf injuries point something out to me. Opponents are allowed to defend him far to aggressively where he's getting stepped on or he doesn't have the space to properly move his feet or land and is suffering injury because of it.
Dame was an iron man when he was younger. I think he played through a lot of pain and injuries. But he's getting older and he can't ignore his body like he could when he was younger. That's just part of getting older.
Could also be that the team used to over rely on him and milked the hell out of him, and now they won't.
SMH Just imagine! If we had signed a real SF and used Hart at Guard we would be so much worse off than having Hart playing out-of-position and 2 injured guards.
Which opens this all up to become another trade thread. Who should they have signed or who could they get as a SF instead of Payton.
Which SF was available for $8m and under that was worth it? Here is the list of SFs signed for the 2022-23 year at $8m and less that are not rookies (some of them might have been RFA, which means that even if you sign them, there is a good chance you will not get them): Tyrese Martin, Matt Ryan, Kessler Edwards, San Hauser, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Josh Okogie, Troy Brown Jr, Yuta Watanabe, KZ Okpala, Justin Jackson Vlatko Cancar TJ Warren, Andre Igoudala (never going to sign here) Simone Fontecchio Derrick Jones Jr (been there, done that) Danuel House JR AJ Griffin Ochai Agbaji Ousnabe Dieng Otto Porter Jr Joe Ingles (Been there, just as injured) Caleb Martin Jae'Sean Tate Cody Martin Of this list, which ones are worth taking a flyer on? Caleb Martin, maybe, but I think he was a RFA, Yuta Watanabe maybe and OPJ if you are willing to risk the chance that it's a new RoCo situation. GP2 is a much higher upside to change the trajectory of this team than probably any of these...
OK, I will yield to the consensus - having Payton out is a wonderful thing. Henceforth, we should never draft or sign a player who can pass a physical.
I believe you are correct about Martin being a RFA. There's nobody on that list that is worth signing in general, but worth it that would somehow alter our path currently. It's easy to sit back and say this is what we should have done. Seeing the list of available players alters that quite a bit, however.
The comment was more directed at the original statement that they should have got a SF instead of an injured Gary Payton. Nothing really to do with Dame.
