Eric Gordon, at 28 years old, should be in his prime right now. That age is usually when players have their primes. But the stats clearly indicate that Gordon is not in his prime right now, and that his prime was actually in his early twenties. The reason for this premature prime? Injuries.
Most people don’t think of Eric Gordon when they think of careers derailed by injuries. They think of Greg Oden and Brandon Roy. That’s fair, I suppose: Gordon is still scoring fifteen points per game, which is not bad for a starting/6th man shooting guard in this league. The thing is, he was averaging 22 per game on better percentages in his third year in the league, back when he still had athleticism and appropriate amounts of intact knee cartilage.
It’s not the saddest NBA story, and it’s not exactly a “tragedy”, but it’s mildly disappointing that we didn’t get to see Gordon dominate as a top-five shooting guard for a decade. Oh well. Maybe he would have naturally started sucking at age 24 anyway.