If you're a Washington Wizards fan, you're probably not too thrilled to read coach Flip Saunders' assessment of John Wall's right knee tendonitis. In an interview with reporters prior to the team's game against the Los Angeles Lakers, Saunders said he thinks Wall will have to play through pain for the rest of the season with the injury.
Via Craig Stouffer of the Washington Examiner:
"I don't think, with his situation, having tendonitis, that he's ever going to be pain free from that," said Saunders. "So I think what we're going to do is we're going to monitor it. That's the approach we're taking, but the reason we say day-to-day is because these things, when you go through them, all of a sudden you might wake up the next day and they might be good to go. That's why we're handling it that way."
This of course leads to the obvious follow-up question: why didn't the team just commit to sitting Wall for an extended period of time instead of sometimes letting him play? In addition, if Wall is struggling through pain, why is he playing over 38 minutes a game in the games he is playing?
Saunders seemed to vent a little more about Wall's situation, saying that it puts the team in an unfair position for him to be constantly a game-time decision, and saying he told Wall that he's already missed more games than John Stockton. Bullets Forever was annoyed about Saunders' comments.
The whole thing just seems like a mess. I don't really care about John Stockton, and I'm not sure whether Wall would either. It all seems preventable, and yet, the head coach is venting about how Wall's body needs to find a better place. Why is this necessary?