BlacJacMac wrote:shrink wrote:BlacJacMac wrote:
Recency matters a lot.
I brought up Embiid because people always talk about how injury prone he is and how many games he misses. Unfortunately KAT in his mid-late 20s is giving Joel a run for his money.
But this neglects the 60 games Towns has “recently” played this season, to Embiid’s 34.
I get your point, but if you are talking about injury-prone reputations, they don’t come from pick-and-choose seasons.
Does your opinion change if he misses the rest of the year and ends up missing over 20 games again?
I'm not really picking and choosing. KAT had 4 Iron Man years followed by 4 years where he missed a bunch of games. This year could still go either way, but even if he comes back and plays 75 games this year, does 1 year negate the previous 4? I'd say its a positive outcome and hope it trends forward, but I'm still going to hold my breath every time he stumbles until he can string more than 1 healthy year in a row together.
Probably not my opinion, but I could see it change other people’s opinions, especially since a few were already calling KAT “injury prone” before today. But then again, I’m probably in the minority in general, because I don’t consider a player injury prone if they don’t have recurring injuries to the same body part. I think size and weight push a player towards injuries (like Embiid and Zion), but I make a distinction between them and a player I consider injury-prone like Simmons. But I realize I’m the minority here, and your point is a valid one.
For the record, if we had a scenario where Embiid miraculously started playing today, (even though he is simply hoping to be back by the playoffs), and Towns missed the entire rest of the season, Embiid STILL would have missed more games than Towns. 60 games in the books is not a positive, but it isn’t an unrealistic season for high usage vets these days, and our position today at the top of the West is partly due to Towns’ health and availability.