Last postseason, Aaron Gordon pushed himself to play through an injury to get back on the court for Denver, but it wasn\u2019t enough for Denver as it got bounced in the first round of the playoffs by Minnesota.<\/p>\n
Peyton Watson did not play in that series after suffering a hamstring injury in February that lingered through the final months of the season and the playoffs. Watson was heading into free agency this summer \u2014 he just completed a sign-and-trade that gets him to Cleveland with a new four-year, $88 million contract<\/a> \u2014 and the decision for him not to play in the postseason was to protect him from himself, Watson\u2019s agent Rich Paul said on his Game Over podcast<\/a> (hat tip Real GM<\/a>).<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got to remember, he didn\u2019t finish the season. He didn\u2019t play in the playoffs. He was dealing with a hamstring injury, soft tissue injury. And when you\u2019re dealing with those injuries, you have to be very careful in your return. Guys want to play, and you have to protect them from themselves in that moment. Because you\u2019re up for a contract and it\u2019s the playoffs, and I\u2019ve had a pretty good year, so I need to play. And it\u2019s important to protect that.\u201d<\/p>\n There were reports during the playoffs that other Nuggets teammates were frustrated with Watson for not pushing through his injury to play. Now we know why. Paul\u2019s answer also may not sit well with Nuggets fans, especially in the wake of what Gordon did, but it\u2019s also what an agent should be doing \u2014 looking out for the long-term health and what is best for his client.<\/p>\n It\u2019s fair to wonder if one reason the Nuggets didn\u2019t meet Watson\u2019s salary demands \u2014 which were less than what they paid Christian Brown the summer before \u2014 was that he didn\u2019t push to get on the court for the playoffs. Although the larger issue was Denver\u2019s finances, it remains over the second apron.<\/p>\n Cleveland needs him on the court this playoffs, with James Harden and Donovan Mitchell in the backcourt, they need his perimeter defense. His offensive game stepped up for a stretch last season, now Watson needs to show that wasn\u2019t an excuse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last postseason, Aaron Gordon pushed himself to play through an injury to get back on the court for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-868750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}