So yeah, this is not ideal for the Indiana Fever. Stephanie White has basically said that it’s unlikely that Lexi Hull, Ty Harris, or Aaliyah Boston are going to play in their game. And you might be wondering, that shouldn’t make too big of a deal. It shouldn’t really matter too much.
It’s not a regular season game, and they’ll be playing if it’s a regular season game. I’m not saying that they’re not going to play game one of the season. I think all three of them probably do play game one of the season. And I understand there is precaution, but I’m scared for the severity of Lexi Hull’s tightness. You don’t want her to play through that.
I’m scared for what was the original severity of Aaliyah Boston’s injury from Unrivaled. That’s kind of what I’m worried about more than anything because Aaliyah is still currently out. A lot of you are saying they might just be cautious. I think the goal is to probably get some minutes on Saturday if they can.
They’re playing the Nigerian national team on Saturday. The game on Saturday is not even against a WNBA team. So the likelihood is that Ty Harris, Lexi Hull, and Aaliyah Boston’s first time playing against a WNBA team will be game one of the season versus the Dallas Wings.
And look, I’m not saying Aaliyah Boston is going to be hurt or Lexi Hull is going to be hurt for the season. It is just a little bit of a concern about the actual severity of their injuries because we don’t know how bad it is. But it’s not ideal not having any practice going into the season.
I think everyone will tell you preseason is there to get reps up. Preseason is where you get your misses out of the way. Preseason is where you get rid of the rust, and that’s not going to happen for potentially two of Indiana’s starters.
The likelihood is that Lexi won’t be starting to start the season. That would be my assumption. Aaliyah Boston is going to start no matter what. But if Lexi and Sophie are a close enough match as is, I do feel like with it being close, it would be quite unlikely to see the player who has been injured playing over the player who’s been healthy.
But look, this isn’t the end of the world. Missing the first game meant nothing. However, if they end up missing all three preseason games, and I understand the games individually mean nothing, they’re there to prep you coming into the season.
And this is an Indiana Fever team that needs to start off well. If the Indiana Fever are hovering around .500 after 10 games, that’s when you start to get concerned because they have a really easy first 10 games where they face the Fire twice and the Mystics twice. The Mystics stink. The Fire stink.
At the same time, I’m just hoping that it is nothing. I’m hoping that it’s just being overly cautious. Again, last year they probably should have been overly cautious with Caitlin Clark in the preseason. That being said, it was a legitimate injury, so there were still concerns going into the season after that preseason situation.
I know you’re looking at it now and saying there are still concerns if they’re missing all the preseason games. There absolutely is a concern. I’m not saying they’ll be missing the season. I’m just saying there absolutely is some concern.
However long it takes, even into the regular season, don’t rush them back. And I actually agree with that. I’m not saying they should be rushed back, but the whole “they’re not playing, they’re fine, there’s nothing wrong with them, we’re just being cautious” — even if that is the case, and it probably is, being cautious means you have a reason to be cautious.
Which means obviously their injuries or recovery situations are a little bit concerning.
There’s no need to force anything. If they aren’t ready for Saturday, let them rest from the bench. I agree with that. We assume their holds are precautionary. It does make sense. Some minutes on Saturday with an eight-day layoff between games could help recovery and rest.
The problem is that they’re coming into a WNBA regular season without any reps. That’s where the issue is with them missing these games.
At the end of the day, if they’re carrying anything or they’re not 100% good to go, sitting them out is better than trying to force reps. But there is also concern with the team coming in with potentially two starters missing or somewhat compromised.
It’s not an ideal scenario.
Again, we do have to look at the Indiana Fever schedule because players missing all of preseason doesn’t bode well for starting the season strong. Getting reps in helps.
I think the Fever are going to be fine. The Fever are lucky, and maybe this is the way they’re looking at it. They’re probably saying, “Look, we don’t have a difficult start to the season.”
They’re confident that even if Aaliyah or Lexi aren’t 100%, they can still beat Dallas or at least go 4-1 to start the season.
Dallas, Mystics, Storm, Fire — if the Indiana Fever are not at least 3-2, they should realistically be 4-1. You can give them one loss against Dallas or LA, especially because the Fever do tend to struggle in those 10:30 Eastern road games.
So maybe they’re looking at the easy start and thinking they can get reps during those games instead.
But there is always that little bit of distrust between the front office injury reporting and the fans after last year. They flat-out lied about Caitlin Clark’s injury, saying she never actually had an ankle injury.
Then when it got revealed that the ankle injury was pretty bad, they released a PR statement saying the ankle injury didn’t affect her return timeline, which is why they never told anyone.
Then after the season, Caitlin came out and said the reason she didn’t play at all was because of the ankle injury.
So yeah, it’s always a bit of a weird one there.
At the same time, I’m hoping this is nothing. It probably is nothing. And I hope they hold them out against Dallas or Saturday too so the rookies can get more playing time to prove themselves for this team and other teams.
I don’t think they’re going to be playing the tall 6’4 rookie because they tried to hide her in the last game. So I think they’re going to keep trying to hide her.
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