Was able to catch a good part of last night's game last night via streamed internet. Love that stuff! Anywho, soon after Oden was yanked and Joel came in, Joel was banged in his injured hand - yet again - and it appeared to negatively affect his play. That's caused some concern for me. How long until his hand/wrist heals? In the meantime, is he favoring it too much? Is he going to re-injure it due to him "needing" to be out there, therefore greater risk in that regard? Are other teams realizing this and attacking the basket even more while he's in there? Yada, yada, yada...... I'm "almost" to the conclusion that Oden should back off a bit more as to ensure he can be on the court longer.
He should be doing that anyway, imo. His fouls are getting out of control. If we didn't have Joel, it would be really hurting our team.
Well, if we could get some god damn perimeter defense to stop the drives sometimes, we'd have Oden in for a longer time. More Bayless body is what we need.
Last week, I asked a friend of mine who's an orthopedic surgeon what he thought about Przybilla's situation. Being a responsible doctor, he said it was impossible to tell without knowing more about the case. From the press reports, Joel has an avulsion fracture of the scaphoid bone in his wrist. My friend said that this is a bone that has a poor blood supply and that heals slowly. If there were a significant fracture, he said that the best thing would be surgery to put a screw in it, but that would shut Joel down for the rest of the season. If the injury is just a flake of bone (consistent with the avulsion fracture label), he said that playing would be painful and might slow the healing process, but that it probably wouldn't do any damage. Presumably, the Blazers' doctors believe the situation to be the latter.
