Atlanta’s forward John Collins has been on the Hawks trading block, perpetually it seems, with many discussions over multiple years between the Hawks and the Jazz on a possible exchange. It finally happened last month when the Jazz agreed to trade several muskrat pelts and a pair of brake pads to an 89 Ford Bronco for Collins and the last three years of his 78.5-million-dollar contract.
OK, the Hawks will not receive any brake pads–I exaggerate. But the Jazz are getting their long-sought-after, freakishly-athletic, still-young power forward for something that has about the same value—Rudy Gay and a second-round draft pick. Looks like a win for the Jazz, correct? The all-knowing Adrian Wojnarowski, ESPN, seemed to think so when he gave his take on the trade saying the Jazz “suddenly, is a real western conference playoff contender”. Writers from the local rags felt similarly. Sarah Todd (2022 Utah Sportswriter of the Year, and well deserved) in a June 26th article in the Deseret News said the trade was a “no brainer” for the Jazz. No brainer?… maybe. Or is the truth closer to the Jazz “getting what they paid for”?
If taking on Collins and his large contract were such a great deal, a no-brainer, why then were there no other GM’s willing to do the same? And why did the market for Collins dissolve to the point that the Hawks simply dumped him. Heck, there was even a market of Cody Zeller (he’s taking his shiny dome to the Pels)… the evil Dillon Brooks just signed a $20 million-per-year contract (Collins’ 2023-24 salary is $25 million). So, what gives with Big John? We grant that the Hawks were in a bind. New salary rules had them looking for relief from a limited number of teams with sufficient cap space. Collins also didn’t do Atlanta any favors with a sad 2022-23 season that saw most of his numbers go down like jets out of fuel. But Rudy Gay for a 25-year old, 30-minute-a-night starter? Seems fishy. Could it be, Lower the Rim asks, that the source of the smell is… the finger?
The finger you ask? Yes, THE finger I answer—the ring finger on John Collins shooting hand that looked so bad after a March 2022 injury even people of substantial intestinal fortitude had to turn away and assume the fetal position at the sight of it. The digit that in the summer of 2022 still looked like an appendage that might have evolved in some bizarro alternative universe. Yes, that finger. But that was 2022 you say, just a sprain, old news, nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about? Look at that finger! I’m getting nauseous just inserting the photo into the article.
Yikes! Whew! We should probably take a breath here. Let’s find something stable to hold onto, raise our heads back above our waists, spit, and look at the mysterious history of this mess.
The Injury
Collins sat out a game with the Indiana Pacers on March 13th of 2022 because of an injured finger (THE finger) and foot. He was listed as a game-time decision against Portland the next night. Sports Illustrated’s Pat Benson reported on March 14th, however, that the injury was worse than first believed, referencing the above photo. A subsequent article by Chris Kirschner of The Atlantic identified the injury (per review by Dr. Deepak Chona, an orthopedic surgeon at Stanford University) as a “Boutonnière Deformity.”
Anybody heard of a Boutonnière Deformity? No? See, very mysterious.
Allow me to explain. A Boutonniere Deformity is caused by an injury to the central slip tensor tendon in your hand. It is not the same as a sprained finger. The graphic below shows where that rupture may have occurred in Collin’s ring finger. With a Boutonnière Deformity, the tear or detachment of the tendon causes the finger to bend up in the middle while the tip of the finger remains straight.
See this cogent explanation below by Dr. Brain Sutterer (Mayo Clinic ((my go-to source for all confusing medical things) affiliated physiatrist)) for a more detailed description of the Boutonniere.
The experts tell us that the result of this type of tendon damage can be corrected by immobilizing the finger immediately after injury. A simple splint is worn continuously, typically for four to six weeks, to hold the finger straight at the damaged joint. Collins missed his first game due to the injury March 13. He sat the rest of the regular season before playing all five games in the Hawks first round April playoff defeat to the Miami Heat. So, he rested that finger from March 13th to the start of the playoffs on April 17th–that sounds like four to six weeks. Did he wear a splint during that time? Don’t know. But If he did, it didn’t take.
Collins’s finger was still jacked up several months after the 2022 playoffs. A photograph of Collins with a still significantly swollen ring finger appeared on a Hawks social media post from a July 23rd Drew League exhibition game. The Hawks media team quickly deleted the photo from their Instagram account once Twitter began to take note—the cover-up is always worse than the crime.
Collins played 71 of 82 games in the Hawks’ 2022-23 season and posted career statistical lows in field-goal percentage, 3-point percentage, rebounds, and assists. He wore a padded wrap on the still-bent finger throughout the season.
The Effect
John Collins is damaged goods… or, maybe more fairly put, he’s goods with a damaged shooting hand. How will that damage affect his game? That’s the question. Adam Bushman, SLCDunk.com (June 29), wrote a nice article illustrating a striking correlation between the start of Collin’s 2022-23 shooting woes and the finger injury. Collins’s shooting accuracy began to tank immediately after returning from the injury for the 2022 playoffs and continued at well-below league average rates through most of the 2022-23 season. His shooting percentage did tick up after the 2023 All-Star break, but that is certainly not enough of a sample period to conclude anything about his future shooting accuracy. The question remains–what type of player is bent-finger Collins? Can he ever recover from, or adjust to, the injury enough to get close to pre-finger performance?
The Jazz must at least have a feel for what the answers to those questions are. They must, and yet their comments on the injury, Collins’s resulting poor 2022-23 performance, and his prospects for the future have been vague at best. Even Collins has not been clear about his condition. Collins, speaking at a July 9th introductory press conference said “I feel like there’s always room for it to get better — it’s like an arm sprain, if I sprain my arm it’s never going to be 100 percent until I stop playing the game, right?… It’s just sort of that mentality of playing through it, rehabbing it, and treating it as such.”
With respect Mr. Collins, your finger injury is not like an arm strain. Arm strains can get better with correct treatment–at this point, your tendon-damaged finger might not.
So, we’re still not getting the whole story, even from the owner of THE finger.
Making up our own story then, since nobody else is telling a clear one: Optimistically, even an 80%-90% Collins is a win for the Jazz. The Jazz are hoping that the upswing in shooting accuracy he experienced after the all-star break last season is the real Collins. And maybe it is. Maybe he is figuring out “how to play through it”. He looked to be in good shape in an appearance on the sideline at a Utah Summer League game sitting among Jazz brass and coaches–his finger is still bent but looked nothing like the atrocity of 2022.
On the other hand, maybe Collins’s uptick in shooting percentage late last season was just an anomaly to what is a new, less-accurate norm. The shape and limited control of the finger will affect the way he grips the ball and, thus, may continue to impact other parts of his game besides shooting. Tendon injuries are more susceptible to re-injury, even if correctly repaired. The finger may worsen with the pounding of a long season, decreasing Collins’s effectiveness over time.
So, which one of these scenarios is it? It’s a mystery. I told you that up front. Now, as he put it in his recent press conference, “It’s time to get on the court and play… let that do the talking.” We’ve seen the finger though. It’s bent. I’d hate to play with it… it’d mess up my silky smooth jumper. But we’re pulling for you Mr. Collins. We’re pulling for the well-paid underdog, the under appreciated, which is, of course, the Lower the Rim way. The Jazz will take 16 and 8 with increased accuracy from Collins. And if they get that, then this deal really was a no brainer. We should have a pretty good idea what the Jazz have paid for by the new year.