Archive for the ‘Landry Fields’ Category

When the Raptors updated the injury status of three players yesterday, two of the updates seemed simple enough. Kyle Lowry had a bone bruise that would keep him out of action another week or two and Alan Anderson had a tear somewhere in his foot that would take 3-6 weeks to recover from.

Then there was Landry Fields and his “ulnar nerve transposition” surgery to fix compression/entrapment in his shooting elbow. I assume that many Raptors fans trying to figure out just what in the hell was really wrong with Fields probably took to Google immediately.

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Yesterday I wrote about just how poor the play (specifically the shooting) of Landry Fields has been to start the season. Today, we may have gotten an answer as to what’s been troubling Fields, as Dwane Casey revealed that Landry will see a specialist to look at a right hand (his shooting hand) issue.

We don’t know how serious this issue/injury might be or how much it’s played into Fields’ poor performance as a Raptor, but it’s probably better for everyone if a minor, treatable issue is the reason behind the struggles as opposed to just not being good enough (it’s probably a bit of both), so here’s hoping this gets resolved quickly and Fields can erase the last five games from our memory with a fresh start.

We all knew that Landry Fields was going to be under a ton of pressure in Toronto after receiving a heavily scrutinized three-year contract worth $18.75 million in the summer, but from what I had seen in Fields’ first two NBA seasons, I was fairly confident that he could live up to the value of the contract (which is only slightly more than the league average salary) since he does things of fundamental basketball value on the court.

Landry has an earned reputation as a player who defends well on the perimeter, rebounds well for his position and moves well off of the ball to create offensive space for teammates without anyone really noticing. The way I saw it, and still see it, is that if Fields could continue to thrive in those underrated areas of the game and could just be counted on to hit the odd open jumper or three-pointer, he’d be a solid glue guy in the starting lineup and a deserving staple in the Raptors’ rotation for years to come.

I’m not ready to concede that five games into his Raptors career, but as anyone who’s watched even a few minutes of Raptors basketball so far this season can tell you, Fields has been far, far worse than even the most skeptical critics of the contract could have imagined.

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