Nothing like a horrifying injury to get everyone in the Holiday spirit! From SB Nation’s Blazersedge:
Joel Przybilla Out For The Year; Blazers Injuries Go From Worse To Worst
The Portland Trail Blazers are seeking an energetic, motivated, team-oriented individual to fill the position of CENTER in their rising, competitive organization. The successful candidate will be a minimum of 7-feet tall,
have a discernable basketball skill, and be able to start on short notice. Luggage carrying experience a plus. Note: Anyone with knees need not apply. A pre-employment test will be administered to ensure compliance.As you have read below the annoying and capricious injury fairy paid yet another visit to the Blazers tonight, this time in the form of Joel Przybilla rupturing a knee tendon and dislocating the knee. His absence is termed "indefinite", which is to "might be back soon" as Mary Jo Kaperski's "maybe" when you asked her to the prom was to "might actually go with you". What can you do at this point but shrug your shoulders and laugh? Not a funny laugh, mind you. It's the laugh you laugh when your house burns down and the fire truck that came to save you tips over on your new car. Yeah, that figures.
...
Every win the Blazers get from here on out is going to be like this one...the result of a ton of hard work, energy, and intensity rather than talent. That's hard to sustain when you're short-handed. The Blazers are now missing 5 of their top 10 players. They are missing all three of their best defenders. They are missing both of their best rebounders. They have lost everybody over 7-feet tall. Brandon Roy is already playing more minutes than everyone in the league. LaMarcus Aldridge's workload just doubled. Eventually the league is going to catch up with what's going on. It's not hopeless, of course, but the Blazers better have their hard hats on and not plan on taking them off until the summer.
From the Oregonian, we hear some of the reactions from the Blazers:
“I knew it was pretty severe when it happened,” said Przybilla, who was smiling and positive after the game. “My leg was stuck in a funny position. It really didn’t hurt, but I could tell something wasn’t right.”...
“We just couldn’t believe that someone else went down,” LaMarcus Aldridge said. “We all stopped and said, ‘Please tell me this ain’t real.’ ... I kind of felt the air go out of us and I was like, ‘I’ve got to keep us going,’ and I was telling guys, ‘We just have to play even harder.’”
...
“Things just keep happening to us,” McMillan said. “We don’t know the reason why. Tonight, we lost big Joel and the guys came together, they didn’t quit, they rallied and they stayed together. I think we played on emotions tonight. I think they were (ticked) off that this happened to another brother, in a sense, another family member. And even though Dallas didn’t really have anything to do with it, I think they kind of took it out on (them).”
It’s really a testament to the people they’ve got in Portland--nobody has talked about throwing in the towel, a “hopeless” season, or invoked any other sort of defeatist logic. But... Man.
This is a pretty crushing blow. To lose someone like Ghostface Pryzbillia--their best remaining defender, rebounder, AND the guy with the coolest nickname in the league--after all the other losses they’ve suffered, it’s just cruel. If there’s any justice in the world, the Blazers will narrowly miss the playoffs and then luck out in the NBA lottery. It may not totally make up for a lost season and a bench full of wobbly patellas, but John Wall would be a nice consolation.
In the meantime, can we hold out Brandon Roy just to be safe? Oh, wait... He’s getting an MRI Thursday?
In the postgame locker room, Roy could not lift his left arm over his shoulder after dinging it in the fourth quarter. After missing a layup, he got tangled with a Dallas player while wrestling for the ball and “tweaked” it. Roy said he was told it was “loose,” and he was in noticeable pain down the stretch and after the game, but said he would try to play versus the Spurs.
He planned to take some anti-inflammatory medication to help his shoulder in the short-term and expects to undergo an MRI when the team returns to Portland on Thursday.
Seriously, what did the Blazers do to piss off the basketball Gods? This stuff is getting biblical.
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