NBA Stars Sidelined Early as Injuries Frustrate Fans

Tyrese Haliburton of the Pacers, we thought getting back now, working back from the Achilles injury over a year ago, he took all of last year off, really started coming to his own, and now he's back on the shelf because he pulled his hamstring. So now they're down Tyrese Halliburton again. Now, the only good thing with the Pacers is that they should actually be used to it because this happened a lot last year when they were trying to make heads or tails without him here. But they're taking on the Sixers tonight, which, by the way, looks like Embiid might very well be back there. But you go down the list, Kawhi Leonard, stop me if you've heard this before. Kurt, we've already talked about the Oklahoma City Thunder, the losses there with Jalen Williams and Cason Wallace. uh and you see you keep going down the list of guys and i'm going it's amazing to me i don't know if it we did it in the NFL right we're going look at the names and the importance of these players who are not available to teams each and every week to the start of the NFL season well wouldn't you know it right here we are right here a week and a half into the NBA season and big name after big name after big name not available right now and i don't know if that's by design because there's no tanking in the NBA and maybe guys that uh have a toe well you know their toe hurts that means i can take a week off because there's 82 games in the season i don't know but it certainly feels like both the NFL and the NBA we're not talking about role players like six men we're talking about Kawhi Leonard's we're talking about the guys that matter to teams and it could be on the shelf for a while including Anthony Edwards who we won't see until 2027 now yeah Luca also out tonight if I'm not mistaken I saw that he has some back spasms or something like that yeah I mean last night Joe when Scott was filling in for you this was a hot topic of our conversation and it's you know sort of why you know going into this and you think about all the years that I've been here at SportsGrid and done the shows during the day and then of course done some shows at night and done some game time decisions shows and filling in and doing those things but to me the NBA has become the least interesting thing for me as somebody who was a season ticket holder for the Heat and went to many games covered Shaquille O'Neal with the Heat, covered Alonzo Mourning with the Heat all those years covered LeBron James, Bosh, Wade all the, I mean I've been to You know, as many hundreds and thousands of Heat games, probably, but, uh, I, I, I just don't appreciate what it has done to the league because I think it's unfair for fans to have to pay for tickets to go see, you know, when they want to see an opponent. And I told the story, Joe, when I was a season ticket holder for the Heat, one of the great things was getting those hard tickets, you know, in the mail and then seeing the logos of the Los Angeles Lakers and thinking, wow, this game, I'm going to get to see Magic Johnson. and now i don't even know that i'm going to get to see any of the opponent stars and i understand the NBA has done some stuff to curb some of it and to try to get players to play more and then there's fines but the fines are just so minuscule in the league and so when i i knew that we were getting ready to do these shows in talking to some of the people here at SportsGrid i'm like like this is not my favorite thing like because i love baseball i love college football i love pro football but i knew that we were going to be faced and i was going to be faced with talking a lot of uh a lot of NBA and it's just bothersome that here we are two weeks not even into the season and already you've got you know three of the top 15 players not ready to play in games already like so it's amazing it sort of is it is what it is but uh good luck to everybody betting on the NBA this season certainly i'll do my best to give as much coverage as i can over the next six months with it but forgive me if a lot of it surrounds just the teams that i'm watching at 7 o'clock Eastern because after 10 o'clock, I am not going to watch those games waiting up to see if Steph Curry is going to play for Golden State. I have no idea. Yeah. Well, and the other problem here, too, Craig, is that the NBA has become impossible to bet early. So getting luck, the only way I have found over the last couple of years in order to get true value betting on the NBA is betting the overreaction of the news that Aluka is out. Makes sense. Or that a SGA is out. Those because the market overreacts like we've never seen in any other sport. But we're talking about weeks-long injuries now, which is just head-scratching since we haven't played more than a week here.