Speaking of hyperventilating, all you Raptor fans out there need to chill about this injury to Jose Calderon.
It’s a tweaked groin with a small tear, relatively minor, he should close to 100 per cent in a couple of weeks and, seeing how we’re a couple of months away from the start of the season, it’s going to be just fine.
We now return you to your regular scheduled other Raptor angst.
The individual seen most often alongside Lowry is another Villanova guard with an NBA pedigree. Alvin Williams is a decade older and four inches taller than this Cardinal Dougherty High School product but it’s clear that the two share a bond. Williams, who played primarily for the Portland Trail Blazers and Toronto Raptors following his graduation in 1997, did not play professionally last season and is now more focused on his post-basketball opportunities, which included appearing as an NBA analyst on Comcast SportsNet. Yet he has much to offer as a mentor.
“Alvin is my main man,” says Lowry of the one-time Germantown Academy standout. “We have worked out a lot this summer and he has so much to teach because of what he learned playing for so long in the league.”
As fellow Philadelphians, the two became acquainted with one another during the middle part of this decade as Lowry grew into a star at Cardinal Dougherty High School. But the pair didn’t truly make a connection until Lowry enrolled at Villanova in the fall of 2004. At the time, Lowry had just torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his knee thereby putting his career on hold for the first time in his life.
“He was an alum that was around and you could talk to,” Lowry states. “There were things that he had gone through that I was experiencing for the first time. We became pretty close over time.”
This summer they have been regularly spotted inside the Davis Center. Williams has offered a wide range of tips on some of the nuances that go into making a successful professional career. And Lowry has always been nothing if not a sponge for knowledge dating back to his time as a Wildcat.
“He has a problem in one of his legs,” was how Spanish coach Aito Garcia Reneses put it. “The doctor told us it is best that he doesn’t play. We will observe the situation for the next game, but he couldn’t play today. He wasn’t ready to play because of his medical condition.”
The adductor is a group of muscles in the groin area that pull the legs together when they contract and also help stabilize the hip joint. They attach from the thigh to the pelvis.
I cannot speak about any of my teammates in particular, all were extraordinary. Those who played a lot and those who played less. It was a team triumph, as always.
I am writing these lines right now just as the game ended and coming out of the locker room. I am sure that you can imagine how happy we all are. We are now Olympic finalists and we are waiting to see what happens in the other semifinal game. Evidently, there is a clear favorite and the Americans have hopes to be the Olympic champions. We hope that they wear themselves out as much as possible and if they make it to the Final, which is very probable, that we find them a little tired.
As you all know, I did not play and I am not very optimistic about playing in the Final. It is a small injury that if I force any further, I run the risk to injure myself more seriously. Yesterday was a difficult day for me, I knew that I could not play today and I felt terrible. I imagine that you all can imagine the deception: nearly two months of practice, even more time thinking and preparing for this moment, and precisely when the big game comes, you cannot play. Today I am feeling much better and above all happy and proud for the achieved objective. In any case, I am sure as I told you the other day, we will play a good final game, and we will fight for the gold.
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