MAVS NEWS:

[SleepingHero]

My comment was made before the 'bone spurs' part was reported. Even so, it's very concerning.

This morning, I posted this on discord before any Lively news: "Arguably the biggest season of Lively's young career. If he can show that he can stay on the floor, it'll lead to a big extension. Another year of less than 50% games played, it's going to be difficult to give him bigger money."

There are several that try to minimize and explain every reason he's missed games. I get the same push back every time I mention my concern. The fact remains, he's only played in 55% of games through two years and now has a major foot injury that are known to be troublesome for NBA Bigs.

I get that the end goal -being Lively has to be more available- is a correct and reasonable thing to pursue.

But context matters. And almost every single one of his injuries has been complete flukes. 

Rookie season in order starting from October:

Illness- missed 1 game
Bruised back- missed 1 game
Ankle sprain- missed 4 games
Ankle sprain- missed 4 games 
Broken nose- missed 7 games
Personal reasons (later discovered his mother's illness was terminal and her condition rapidly worsened)- missed 1 game
"Knee"- again later discovered the team let him go to be with his dying mother- missed the last 8 games of the season. Lively's mom passed April 12th

From his rookie year, of the 26 games that he missed, only 8 of them came from actual real injuries that were due to his "fragility". The broken nose was a freak accident. The bruised back came off a putback dunk where he landed hard. And the last 9 games were due to his mothers' rapidly worsening cancer diagnosis and eventual death.

I think that's reasonable.

His 2nd year you can definitely critique being fragile, although I think more of that is due to the Mavs training staff was quite literally a bunch of amateurs employed by Nico.

Going through those injuries and time missed:

Shoulder- missed 4 games
Illness- missed 1 game
Bruised hip- missed 4 games 
Stress fracture on the ankle- missed the rest of the season.

SO yeah, definitely more concerning type of injuries this year. But the Mavs were about to go let Lively play on a sprain before discovering how serious his injury actually was. I blame the medical/training staff than I do put the fragility on Lively. Context matters. Of all his injuries realistically only the ankle stuff has been concerning.