The Bobbies and a Broken Beno

Perhaps it would behoove us fans of Bobby Brown to, um, see it before we believe it. But Reggie Theus is telling Sam Amick that Brown will have a shot to prove himself in game situations.

"Bobby Jackson's role, in my opinion, is going to be sort of a dual role," he said. "I think that … all three guys [Jackson, Beno Udrih, Brown] have to play. How many minutes? They'll determine that by their action on the floor. I still stick by – I guess, hide behind – the rule that I don't make the decision how many minutes guys play. They decide that by how they are on the floor and how they practice."

The hook into this discussion by Amick is the notation that Udrih is "injury-prone." Coincidentally, Jeremy from SBN brother blog Pickaxe and Roll recently did a post questioning the basis of the "injury-prone" label as it pertains to Nene and Kenyon Martin.

Are there really people walking the streets whose joints and ligaments and muscles are more likely to give way under the stress of a long rugged basketball season? Well, the presence of people like Sean May tells me that the answer is yes. There are also people like Gilbert Arenas and Tracy McGrady who injure their knee or back (or shoulder or other knee) and become more susceptible to reinjuring that same part. Once Arenas’ knee is rehabbed it might be just fine. In fact, it probably will be. How many botched knee surgeries are there that players truly not recover from?

Does Udrih have a single nagging injury which has bothered him throughout his career? No ... it's been an assortment of maladies (stiff back, broken finger). You could make the argument that he doesn't seem disposed to playing through pain. But that might also be attributed to his lack of financial security up until this summer -- last March, do you play through the pain for a losing team when a summer contract is in the air?

A study a few years ago found that for missed games have little correlation on a year-to-year basis. For every six games a player misses one season, he is expected to miss one in the next campaign. So yes, Udrih missed a glut of games last season due to injury. But that doesn't necessarily mean we need to worry about him getting hurt this year.