News and notes

[Kim Malo]

At 10:57 AM 8/14/2006, jozersky at optonline.net wrote:
>If a player -- any player -- says he is experienceing crippling
>pain, that should be respected.

But that's not what was being reported. Merely continued pain, such 
as might be experienced during any rehab.

>  Jefferson is apparently in
>a cast of some kind, not "taking it easy."  I suspect that they
>did take out bone chips, but didn't say anything in order to
>not harm his trade value...in any case, there is not the slightest
>reason to think Jefferson would be faking ankle pain to earn
>himself an extra few hours on the couch.  That's idiotic, the
>same kind of thinking that ruined Andrey Toney's career and
>who knows how many others.

Well no one said it but you.
There's a difference between injury and just pain, which most pro 
athletes have most of the time. And which you have to learn to play 
through. And yes, with a very young player who's already shown a 
history of unusually long time to recover from basic things such as 
ankle sprains, who wasn't taking particularly good care of himself 
and had shown a questionable work ethic in other ways, who has 
probably always been pampered and never had to play through real pain 
(note, again, pain vs injury) then yes, there is grounds to question 
whether he has a real problem or is simply unable to handle pain 
well. That being said, I didn't think he was whining during summer 
league since he didn't go on and on about it or use it to make a lot 
of excuses, but it did seem credible that he was having an adjustment 
to playing through lingering pain because it was something new to him.

However, there's an uncomfortable pattern developing with the Cs and 
their medical staff of first Jefferson, then Tony Allen having 
surprising trouble recovering from injuries where it never seems to 
occur to anyone there's a problem other than the player's toughness, 
then having to have further surgery because of further problems that 
weren't previously identified. At the least there seems to be some 
communication problems.

Kim