Every morning, we compile the links of the day and dump them here… highlighting the big storyline. Because there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a good morning dump.
“He saw some specialists over the last six or eight weeks, and they all came to the same conclusion,” Danny Ainge said on Tuesday, speaking to the media via Zoom. “That gave Kemba a great peace of mind as he went to different doctors in our country and got the same opinions. He’s on a program, seems to be in a very good, happy spot. Maybe we didn’t do him justice by bringing him back too fast in the bubble, being hurt and finding some urgency during the regular season. We don’t want to make that mistake if it was a mistake this time. I’m not blaming anybody.
“But it’s not a perfect science. It’s guesswork, and we’re trying to do the bet with the information that we have and get him as strong and healthy as he can be, so he can make it through the year.”
Jesus Christ… can this team ever catch a break? Gordon Hayward may have taken the injury bug with him to Charlotte, but not before infecting Kemba Walker.
The fact that Kemba doesn’t need surgery is troublesome to me. Most often, surgery is needed to fix something obvious, like a tear or removal of a loose body. But a stem cell injection? I’m no doctor, but I fear we are dealing with some type of arthritic situation where pain management and flare-ups are the norms.
While the Celtics are cautiously optimistic publicly, they might be panicking behind closed doors. According to Sean Devaney of Forbes:
While considering the future with Hayward, Celtics team president Danny Ainge poked around, according to league sources, for possible trades involving Walker, but that was always destined to be a longshot errand—Walker is 30 years old, struggled with knee troubles last year and is owed $108 million over the next three seasons.
No team wanted to take on a problem like that, which means it belongs exclusively to the Celtics now.
Most of us applauded Danny Ainge for signing Kemba to a 4 year, $140 million contract and salvaging the 2019 off-season. There was minimal pushback to investing big bucks in a 29-year-old, 6-foot point guard. Kemba had a track record of durability. But perhaps Michael Jordan knew something the Celtics did not. Perhaps, in a moment of desperation, the Celtics overlooked the obvious.
I really hope Kemba is not breaking down. Here’s me freaking out about Kemba during my segment last night on 98.5 The Sports Hub with Adam Jones.
Related links: The Athletic – Kemba Walker’s knee injury and the ripple effects on the roster |
On Page 2, another trash-talking gem from Larry Legend.
Shawn Kemp was a rookie in 1989 when Larry Bird dropped 40 points on him. Here’s how Kemp remembers that game and Bird’s nonstop trash-talking, via the Knuckleheads podcast pic.twitter.com/quDr6T1v5k
— Stefan Bondy (@SbondyNBA) December 2, 2020
I could have used this space to lament Gordon Hayward’s departure or question why a 30-year-old player with $150 million in career earnings would walk away from his best chance at winning a title.
But it’s much more fun to flashback and remember the greatest player and trash-talker this league has ever seen.
The rest of the links:
Globe – In the end, the role Hayward would have played with the Celtics wasn’t enough
NBC – Forsberg reacting to Kemba’s knee, Gordon’s explanation, and the state of the Cs
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