I thought that when Kyle Lowry came back, Fred VanVleet wasn’t supposed to play forty minutes per game anymore. But Nick Nurse has such a bone-on for this dude that he can’t bear to not start him, so FVV starts at the shooting guard position while Lowry starts at point guard. If Nurse doesn’t watch out, VanVleet is going to get Thibbed into the ground and end up with some kind of easily-avoidable overuse injury.
Then again, the guard situation in Toronto is slim right now. Norman Powell is injured. Patrick McCaw has to start to account for Pascal Siakam’s injury, so he’s already getting minutes at another position. Matt Thomas is injured as well. The only other option is Stanley Johnson, who must be losing his mind over the fact that there are so many injuries at his position but he’s still not even active. If I was Nick Nurse, I would dust Johnson off and see if he could do anything. This is like the one chance Johnson will have to get his career back on track before he’s out of the league.
After going through the Raptors’ injury report, I understand Nurse’s rationale a bit more. He really has no choice but to overuse VanVleet and hope that VanVleet’s relatively young body can absorb the punishment. But if this continues for too much longer, VanVleet is going to have his career prematurely ruined like what happened to Luol Deng. Although, there are worse things than getting paid twenty million dollars by the Lakers to stay in the locker room and lift weights while games are happening that you could be playing in.