Monday, November 19, 2007

No pain, no gain for J-Ho

Josh Howard doesn’t show up on the team’s official injury report. That doesn’t mean he’s not playing with pain.

The list of sprains and strains currently includes wrist, thigh, ankle and his side. It might be easier to list what doesn’t hurt on the All-Star small forward.

“I am not healthy, but I am able to fight through these injuries,” he said. “You have to be tough mentally to get through a long season. I am a tough guy. I’ll get through it.”

Howard has yet to miss a game to injury this season. (He sat out the first two suspended.) He sure has put the hurt on the opposition, averaging a team-high 22.9 points to go along with 5.9 rebounds.

“Very high,” is how Devin Harris described Howard’s pain threshold. “It’s known that guys undercut him on his jump shot, come under his ankles. I know for a fact when you go to the basket as you do, you get banged up. He plays through it.”

1 comment:

Jodie Sanders said...

Can you explain the difference between an injury that will keep a player out of a game and one that will not? Is it how well he can function on the court with it or if further injury might occur? Might "playing through it" delay recovery? This is aside from the fact that the player might be either overly macho or a wuss!