05-09-2026, 12:03 PM
(05-09-2026, 11:40 AM)mvossman Wrote: Lively is more than an idea. We saw him be very impactful as a rookie in a finals playoff run. I'm not ready to assume he will never get back to that because he had two three injury riddled seasons assisted by the most incompetent medical staff in the NBA..
FIFY.
Even his rookie season, he was greatly limited in availabiity. That was his "good" year, and he only played in 2/3 of the games, and less than 1300 minutes (of the ~4000 minutes in a season). That year he had 4 separate multi-game stretches of being out, of 4, 5, 7, and 8. It got worse in year 2 (3, 4, and 37 game stretches missed). And even more limited this past season, where he barely played at all the whole season (only 115 minutes stretched over 7 games).
The fact that Lively is a plus player when available doesn't really do anything for the team, when he's so unavailable. You (and everyone else who is seeing him as the answer to depend on) are indeed NOT basing that on what he is actually doing, but on what he in theory could do - if he played. It's the Oden thing all over again. We like the idea of what Lively can do, but are ignoring the reality of how infrequently he really does it.
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