Brand not 100%?

[LongLiveHinkie]

After hearing an entire offseason of how Brand is 100% from Brand himself, Stefanski, and Cheeks, I heard something to the contrary today.

Stephen A Smith was doing his NBA preview segment on ESPNews earlier, and he said something along the lines of "When I talked to Mo Cheeks, and Elton Brand, they both admitted Brand isn't 100% , but he should still be good enough to add a lot to the Sixers." Something like that.

Now we have two conflicting sides of the story.

Thoughts?

[Nofx8881]

He probably isn't.

It's not an easy injury to overcome and he's on a new team with new guys and a new scheme and all that.

His preseason stats indicated he may not have been 100 percent. He got stuffed more than a turkey on Thanksgiving. It seemed like every game he played he had 3 or 4 blocks against which would seem to show that he may have lost a bit of his jumping ability which wasn't that great to begin with.

I still expect 18/10 from him.

[Dedicated_76ers_fan]

Stephen.A.Smith makes up a bunch of crap. Just a few moments ago, in that analysis he raved about. He gave Philly little to no credit. Now he talks about them as a top 3 team in the east. I don't believe Smith. I'm quite fine with Brand. With the exception of the NJ Game. Here are his stats in Cleveland:

13 pts, 12 rebs, 2 BLKS. I like that.

[ExplosionsInDaSky]

probably blow his knee out and be done 4 the year

[The Guilty Party]

I saw the same SAS segment and the vibe I got is that Brand is close and will only get better which is good given how inconsistent he was in the pre-season. I'll worry about Brand if we're 10 games in and he's still struggling from the field.

[eyeatoma]

He shot 38 percent or so from the field during the preseason...I'm already worried lol...

[Don]

We don't know if any current injury is related to the achilles. I'll reserve judgement until after the first 10 games. By then if he's not at full speed and comfortable with the team, I will really be worried about the season. He did well at the end of last season. I expect his season averages (pts/rebs) to dip a little here as compared to the Clips as the Sixers have a better group of compliments.

[bigdavid]

Brand was and still might be a great player. I just hope he does not turn into a Webber.That would leave us in a very sad situation considering his outrageous salary.

[geiger]

I am not overly concerned. Webber had repeated problems with his knees and looked pretty shot when we got him. Not to mention that he was 4 years older than Brand. Brand has a freak, one time injury and he looked rusty at the end of last season, but didn't look unhealthy. Is he back to 100% after playing so few games in the past calendar year and after undergoing what still was a tough surgery and rehab? Probably not. He's probably still a little rusty and still not at full strength. But I'm not overly concerned with how long it will take him to be back to 100% or long term health implications. I still think at the end of the season, we'll see 20 and 10 with over 2 assists, nearly 2 blocks, a steal, FG shooting around 50% and FT shooting in the 70s.

[shadowTerp]

I'm not concerned... because everyone seems to be forgetting he also just had his first child... he's going to be a little distracted and missing sleep. He'll overcome it soon enough.

[King Raptor]

EDITED BY TGP: Again... trolling. A warning has been issued via PM.