You might have missed a fairly big NBA report on Monday, so let’s recap: Utah Jazz forward Bojan Bogdanovic is getting season-ending surgery on his wrist, per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
The NBA, of course, is in limbo. If the league doesn’t come back for a modified 2020 playoffs, it’s simply Bogdanovic making sure he’s healthy for what could be a full 2020-21 season.
But that limbo makes this decision — we don’t know if it was Bogdanovic’s choice or the Jazz’s — a curiosity.
Before the league suspended play the night of March 11 when Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19, the Jazz had righted their ship after a sluggish start, and had won five or their last six. They were the No. 4 seed in the West, just a game and a half behind the No. 3 seed Denver Nuggets. It’s conceivable that in a tournament or shortened playoffs that they could be a darkhorse team.
Yet now’s the time when Bogdanovic — in the middle of a career year with 20.2 ppg — elected to have surgery?
Could that mean the Jazz don’t think they can overcome, say, the Lakers or Clippers in a hypothetical postseason and would rather have Bogdanovic good to go for next season? If he had kept playing, would it have gotten worse?
And — if we’re pulling back the magnifying glass a bit — it makes me wonder how other NBA teams and players are approaching this idea of a summer postseason and next year.
If you’re on a contending team, maybe unlike Bogdanovic you’re electing to hold off on surgery and hope you make a run. If you’re out of the running entirely, are you assuming your season is basically over and focused on a possible December return?
See? So many questions about one decision. And we may get a lot more of these as the NBA continues to figure out what it will do this summer.
