Cosmic wrote:Paladin55 wrote:...But some of us noticed unnatural motion control on his part when picking up loose balls. This was exasperated against the Pacers where several forum members noticed unusual behavior and lethargy on the part of Gallo....this is our future. And it seems grave to me.
Where do you come up with these lines, my friend. I marvel at your sometimes tortured use of the English language.
Did you notice any "unnatural motion control, or unusual behavior and lethargy" against the Nets, by the way?
... and did you start another thread using your most recent observations of his play?
Just wondering.
I did. His legs weren't under him later in the game. He threw up an airball and a bad brick. This goes to the stiff lower back muscles.
In the Indy game there was a loose ball in front of him and he couldn't speed up nor reach down to get to the ball. Again, this goes to stiff lower back muscles.
When he runs he takes a moment to get going. When he walks he walks very upright and stiff from the mid back to his upper thighs.
He's constantly on the sideline tending to the problem.
These are all indications of stiff lower back muscles and spasms. The reactions are involuntary. When your lower back tightens up you have little to no strength and little to no movement - especially when dealing with reaction time - your reaction time is slowed because you try to move, your back tightens up like a charley horse, and it takes a moment for that initial tightness to subside, so you can do what you want to do.
And, finally, we know the problem, thanks to Marv Albert and Mike Fratello: He is suffering from back spasms. Q, Duhon, TMac....suffer the same problems and it limits them. Pippen had the problems later in his career and it slowed him down a lot.
Look, we all want Gallo to be healthy and excel as a player but purposely pretending there's nothing wrong with him doesn't help a thing.
It is very obvious, especially to those who suffer from back problems (like myself for example) that he is suffering out there. It shows frequently in his game and his movements or lack there of at times. No one is making this up. No one is hating on Gallo. No one is trolling out of boredom.
Bottom line is that Gallo has back problems and they are inhibiting his play.
Against the Nets, he would have stayed in at the end if he had not been paying too much concern to guarding the middle and not getting back to his man on the wing in time. Do you think that he would have gone to the basket and tried to jam over Lopez if he had concerns about his back?
His issue was never back spasms, though, as far as I know- his pain and discomfort was from something more internal.
I actually have some concern about his back- how can you not be concerned after back surgery, but I am not going to look at every single game he plays and micro-analyze. (If you want to micro-analyze his season, by the way, the good moments outweigh the bad by a wide margin.) The guy is recovering from back surgery, and physically he is not yet 100%. Accept it and look at his progress over the entire season, not just one game after an extended period of "rest."
And lets be honest, his back is not paying attention to what any of us are saying or thinking, and nothing said here has any affect on his recovery progress. It will progress or deteriorate regardless of what we believe or post.
What I have trouble with is people who look at one game and generalize without considering everything that has happened over the beginning of this season. Why aren't people commenting on the totality of his season and how he has fared as a player during stretches where the Knicks have played multiple games in short periods of time- exactly the kind of stretches in the season you would think he might rekindle a back injury. People might be surprised if they actually took the time to do so.
And why don't people actually speculate about or consider the process or "mechanism" which might have led to the "stiffness" or spasms he experienced the game after the break. What parts of the body actually experience spasms (This is a rhetorical question, by the way-you answer it in your response.), and what can cause them? I sometimes have had them from my sport, wrestling, and for me it has always come from some form of over-exertion/lifting. I would hypothesize that he was doing some rather significant rehabbing at the Knicks' facility, and had overworked the muscles around his back. I could be wrong, but I am trying to account for the fact that his stiffness occurred AFTER an extended break, not after a 4 game in 5 day stretch.
None of this takes away from the fact that we that should be concerned about his future, but this concern does not mean I am going to be looking at every little play and analyzing his body responses. (So he reacts poorly to a loose ball and that is indicative of a back issue?? If that is true the entire Knicks team has back issues.)
The guy needs an off-season of supervised strength exercises, hopefully with someone not associated with the Knicks, and he could have used another month or two of effective back rehab to strengthen his lower back muscles and legs, just as Wilson could have used another month or two to fully recover from his injury, and Nate could have used some more time to rehab his injury. Unfortunately, though, the season is on, and they don't have the time to rehab as efficiently as they can in the off-season.
We need a permanent "Chicken Little- The Sky is Falling!" thread where we can consolidate all threads relating to Gallinari's back, Hill being a bust, "we should have gotten this or that player-look at what they did in this or that game!" and any knee jerk response threads where people feel the need to make generalizations based on a paucity of evidence.
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities- C.N. Bovee
11/22/2009 3:04 PM