I Am Officially Worried About Kemba Walker's Knee
*clears throat*
Maybe this is all an overreaction but I would be lying to you if I told you reading every one of those tweets didn't send a chill down my spine. I think part of it is knowing how important Kemba is to the success of this team combined with the injury history this franchise has had and how they usually try to spin things as not so bad only for them to in fact be big time trouble. It dates back to KG's knee to Isaiah's hip, Kyrie's knee, Hayward's foot etc. It always seems like they never tell the truth so why should I believe them now? We still have two weeks before games start, but Kemba's also had 4 months and shit still isn't right. How can anyone say they have zero concerns about this? It's a BIG DEAL if Kemba's knee isn't right, he doesn't have his quickness and can't get past his primary defender. We all saw how terrible things looked post All Star break. I don't want to go back to that life.
I can understand being cautious and bringing Kemba along slowly after so much time off once things initially started back up again. That's not the concerning part for me. That's smart. The concerning part is that after doing that, he's still sitting out practices. I'm supposed to believe he can handle a condensed schedule when he can't even practice? Admittedly, I am not a doctor, but something tells me you don't put a guy on a "one day off, one day on" plan if there's nothing to worry about.
This isn't just important once we get to the playoffs either. The 8 ramp up games are all very important for this team as they are still jockeying for playoff seeding. It may be in their best interest to catch TOR, and that's going to be tough with an injured Kemba. You have to imagine they are going to rest him at points during the 8 game ramp up so that now brings an additional challenge.
Then my brain goes to the future, past this season. We're in Year 1 of Kemba's deal. I'm to believe this is only going to get better as he ages? Talk about some shit luck. This is a dude who played every game basically his entire tenure in CHA, he comes here, has a great season and boom. Now he has the knees of a 75 year old man.
I know you can usually turn to me to spin this sort of shit as a positive, but I'm not so sure I can right now. Not until I see him play. If he plays and is the same old Kemba and is able to recover well, then we can all look back at this and laugh. But right now? Kemba's knee has me big time shook.