During his conference call with reporters on Monday, Los Angeles Clippers head coach Doc Rivers addressed the thumb injury of Los Angeles Lakers point guard Rajon Rondo.
Rondo suffered a fracture in his right thumb and will undergo surgery this week. Rivers, who won a title with Rondo in 2008 on the Boston Celtics, said fluke injuries are impossible to prevent.
“Well, it doesn't matter how hard you push them. You've got to play. We're playing basketball. So you're going to have competitive practices, like every team will. And it happens,” Doc Rivers told Clippers reporters, via ClutchPoints' Tomer Azarly.
“Listen, no one is trying to get anyone injured. I guarantee you whatever the Lakers were doing was not to say hey, let's get someone injured. It just happens. It's part of sports. Like you can be running down the floor with no one around and you can go down. There's almost no way to prevent injury other than not playing at all, and if you did that, you're not going to win.
“You know, listen, every time we have a practice, we're worried about it. We all are. The whole league is. That's just the way it is. But you need it to get better. I would say time of practice, that's something we do monitor. We don't want to go three hours of all running; that makes no sense to us. But it's hard to prevent injuries, especially fluke injuries like that.”
Rivers is spot-on with his statement. The injury Rondo suffered is an ailment numerous players throughout NBA history have sustained.
With that said, even though players are prone to get hurt in Orlando since they haven't played in games since March, the Clippers' coach doesn't see reducing practice time as a solution that should be used moving forward.
Hopefully, Rondo is the only player in the bubble who gets hurt. Both the Clippers and Lakers have championship aspirations and most NBA pundits believe the two Los Angeles teams will meet in the 2020 Western Conference Finals.
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