“I can’t play the ball now, I can’t even run, I can’t jump.”
No one knows how much pain, sadness and even depression accumulated in his heart when he said this sentence except “brother Ball” Lazo-Bauer himself.
This is what Powell said in an interview on September 28, Beijing time. Tomorrow Powell will lie on the cold operating table again and undergo the third knee surgery in five years.
According to Bull’s statement, what Powell will accept is the left knee surgery, which will be reevaluated 4-6 weeks later. It seems that Powell still hopes to return in November. Considering that Powell’s knee injury has become the most bizarre suspense drama of the year NBA2021, Bull coach donowan has even prepared for Powell’s possible season reimbursement. No one can say whether Powell can play in the new season.
Good things in the world are not firm, and colorful clouds are easily scattered and crisp.
Powell finally changed from a generation of Iron King to a marksman. He was regarded as the core player of the Bull revival. But unexpectedly, Powell’s development and bull’s rise were all delayed by Powell’s bizarre left knee injury.
Turn the clock back to January 15, 2021. the bull who ranked first in the East with 27 wins and 13 losses takes a home game against the warrior who ranked first in the West with 31 wins and 11 losses. The top war in the East and West attracted countless attention, but unexpectedly, the top war turned into a Abuse Bureau because of knee injury shortly after the opening of Lavin. Warriors once established a leading edge of more than 30 points. At 5 minutes 2 seconds before the end of the fourth quarter, Donovan’s flag swapped Powell. At that time, it was only regarded as a signal that the bull raised the white flag to surrender. No one expected that this would be the last appearance of Bauer in the season.
After the game, media fans were all paying attention to Lavin’s MRI results, but the bull announced at the same time that Powell would miss the next game. From this moment on, the suspense drama of Bauer’s knee injury was officially opened. A week later, Bull announced that Powell would undergo an open knee surgery with a recovery time of 6-8 weeks. This result was optimistic. After all, everything went well and Bauer could return at the end of the regular season. In March, Bauer began to train for strength and running. He said in the interview that he felt good and hoped to return as soon as possible.
On March 22, Powell felt unwell in his knee during running training, and the bull postponed Powell’s comeback plan. On April 1st, Powell resumed rehabilitation training, but there was no progress in recovery. The Bull official announced the reimbursement of Powell’s season a week later. According to bull, when Bauer was trained in high intensity, he still felt pain in his left knee. Powell said that he did not know what the problem was, even the doctor was not sure. “Ball dad” Laval-Bauer accused the Bull of being impatient and let his son start training too early.
Losing Bauer, the bull changed from a strong team competing for the top of the eastern region to a common team that almost fell to the additional division. Before Bauer was injured, the bull was 27 wins and 13 losses, and then it was 19 wins and 23 losses. Powell reimbursed, the bull can use Caruso to fill the vacancy of Bauer on the defensive end, but no one can fill the role of Bauer on the offensive end.
Before Bauer was injured, the bull used the opponent’s error field to score the 6th in the league, switched to the top 10 in the league with attack assists, and hit the first in the league with a 3-point hit rate. After Bauer was injured, the bull used the wrong field to score the 26th in the league and the third hit rate fell to the 22nd.
In the first round of the playoffs, the Bucks gambled that the bull’s outside line was not allowed, and they wantonly emptied the bull’s outside line. As a result, the bull without Bauer didn’t compete on the outside line. The three-point hit rate was only 28%, and they were eliminated only after resisting 5 games.
“Every time I watch the game, I feel that if I were there, I would exert great influence instinctively,” Powell said. “I feel that my shooting can definitely help the bull.”
Powell is not bragging. He was indeed the iron King once, but after leaving the Lakers, he has transformed into a marksman. According to statistics, Powell’s three-point hit rate in the first two seasons of his career in the Lakers ranked the second lowest in the league at the same time (at least 500 times to three points). In NBA history, 82 players shot at least 500 three points in the first two seasons of their career, and Powell ranked the sixth from the bottom with a hit rate of 31.5 percent.
But after joining Pelican, Powell changed his shooting posture with the help of shooting coach Pinson. In the third season of his career, he increased his three-point shooting rate to, and in the 2020-21 season, he increased, before the reimbursement last season, it was. In addition, Powell’s free throw hit rate increased from less than 50% to more than 75%.
The progress of Powell’s projection is mainly reflected in the goal-free attack. His three-point shooting rate of receive the ball is more than 41%, which makes him very suitable to cooperate with attacking-type players holding the ball. Around drozan and Lavin, he can play a role with receive the ball shooting, defense and organizational concatenation capabilities. He is equivalent to a 3D player with a guard property.
“He is making progress every year. He played his career masterpiece before his injury last season,” Caruso said. “His shooting is too accurate, his assist rate also increased after the increase in the usage rate of ball rights. On the defensive end, he and I are one of the 5-10 defenders with the best defensive ability in the league.”
Powell’s transformation had already won recognition, otherwise the bull would not have offered a fat contract of $80 million for 4 years during the offseason last year. During the off-season this year, the bull has been helping Powell recover, and Bauer has also been taking conservative treatment, hoping to avoid moving the knife as much as possible. However, during the whole off-season, Powell’s recovery did not progress at all. What the bull announced was that “Powell’s recovery speed did not meet expectations”.
As a last resort, Bull introduced veteran Goran Dragic in the free market to provide an insurance for the back court. However, under the background that Knights and Eagles formed an all-star backcourt group and strong teams such as Celtics, basketable nets and 76 people all had all-star defenders, there was no Bauer, is the bull’s back-court resource reserve enough to allow them to enter the top six in the east to avoid play-offs?
Powell’s 7.7 three-point positions every 36 minutes may be filled by the progress of Kobe White, dausum, Caruso and the support of Goran Dragic, but Powell’s defensive value, no one can fill the talent of organizing attack.
Last season, in the Bulls, in the ranking of various high-level data reflecting the defensive influence, Powell all pressed Caruso to rank first in the whole team, with his height of 1.98 meters, the attribute of preventing multiple positions is not that Caruso can fill it with hard work. Powell’s outstanding height and the passing vision cultivated in his childhood enable him to create many good opportunities for his teammates during the conversion of attack and the removal of ground combat blocks, this is also an ability that other bull defenders who are partial to attack or partial to defense do not have.
“We miss Bauer too much,” said the bull general manager canisovas, “We miss his height, ability to push back, our pace slowed down obviously in the second half of last season.”
At the beginning of the season, the Bulls were destined to set foot on the journey when Bauer could not play. They could only pray that the suspense drama would end as soon as possible.
This is also Powell’s biggest wish now.
“I hope I can come back as soon as possible after this operation to help the team achieve our common goal, that is to win the championship.” Bauer said.