{"id":765407,"date":"2026-06-28T08:51:21","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T08:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765407\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T08:51:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T08:51:21","slug":"southwest-notes-vanvleet-thornton-boozer-pelicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/765407\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Notes: VanVleet, Thornton, Boozer, Pelicans"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest episode of his Unguarded podcast,<\/a> Rockets guard Fred VanVleet<\/a> opens up about the extent of the damage he suffered to his right knee last fall, relays Matt Young of The Houston Chronicle<\/a> (subscription required). VanVleet missed the entire season after tearing both the ACL and meniscus during a workout as part of a team retreat to the Bahamas prior to the start of training camp.<\/p>\n

VanVleet said he was in the middle of a great session and was showing his younger teammates the benefits of having Kevin Durant<\/a> to lean on in the offense. Then his knee gave out on a drive into the lane and he called it \u201ca shotgun blow.\u201d As VanVleet limped off the court, he tried to convince himself that it wouldn\u2019t be a long-term issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m walking around like, \u2018Damn, I f\u2014 my s\u2014 up,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s September, so I\u2019m already going like, \u2018All right, bet, maybe two, three weeks, I\u2019ll probably miss the first preseason game and I\u2019ll be cool.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The reality began to sink in when he woke up from a nap and his knee was swollen \u201cas big as a basketball,\u201d but VanVleet still couldn\u2019t accept the situation. Even after an MRI confirmed the damage, he believed a mistake had been made.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018No, that ain\u2019t mine. No. I didn\u2019t (tear my ACL).\u2019 They\u2019re like, \u2018You did, bruh. You tore your ACL,\u2019\u201d VanVleet said. \u201cI said no, so I\u2019m arguing. I did that for like three days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

VanVleet added that he plans to return this season with a \u201cchip on my shoulder.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLike anything else, just more challenges, more s\u2014 to work through, make the story better,\u201d he said. \u201cS\u2014, you know, I got another 10 in me, so we\u2019re going to see, we\u2019re going to get back to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more from the Southwest Division:<\/p>\n

Before trading up<\/a> to the 31st pick on Wednesday, the Rockets received \u201coverwhelmingly positive reviews\u201d on Ohio State guard Bruce Thornton<\/a> from virtually everyone they contacted, Varun Shankar of The Houston Chronicle<\/a> writes in a subscriber-only piece. They had him ranked higher than 31st on their draft board and are impressed by his ability to score in a variety of ways. Shankur notes that Thornton ranked in the 98th percentile in effective field goal percentage as a senior and was in the 93rd percentile in assist-to-turnover ratio.
\nAfter being selected with the third pick, Cameron Boozer<\/a> talked to Michael Wallace of Grind City Media about how he hopes to transform the Grizzlies (Twitter video link<\/a>). \u201cYou play the game to win,\u201d Boozer said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ve done at every level. I hope to bring that to Memphis.\u201d
\nRobert Williams<\/a>, Jusuf Nurkic<\/a> and Mitchell Robinson<\/a> could be targets for the Pelicans in their search for another center, per Dylan Sanders of Yahoo Sports<\/a>. New Orleans is expected to decline<\/a> its $8MM team option on Kevon Looney<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the latest episode of his Unguarded podcast, Rockets guard Fred VanVleet opens up about the extent of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,364686,22566,19703,70742,16104,5672,85],"class_list":["post-765407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-bruce-thornton","tag-cameron-boozer","tag-fred-vanvleet","tag-jusuf-nurkic","tag-mitchell-robinson","tag-robert-williams","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}