Austin Rivers may have been finally starting to figure it out. But now we’re not going to find out for a while.
Rivers will be out four to six weeks with a broken fourth metacarpal bone in his right hand suffered in the Hornets come-from-ahead loss to the Lakers Wednesday night. Which is to say you can pretty much expect him to be done for the season.
Rivers had gone for a steal in the first half of the game and his hand jammed into the body of teammate Greivis Vasquez and that caused the fracture.
For the fist 50 games of this season, the No. 10 overall pick in the last draft had been bad. I mean historically bad. Before the All-Star Game Rivers was scoring 6 points a game shooting 35 percent on the season, 31.6 percent from three, and he was barely getting more assists than turnovers. The Hornets kept playing him under the theory he would improve, but it didn’t look good.
But in his last 5 games (10 really) he has started to show he’s learning from all those mistakes. He is averaging 8.4 points per game on 62.1 percent shooting, and his assist turnover ration is up to 2/1 in the last five games. He had 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting against the Lakers before breaking his hand.
He may or may not make it back this season, but Rivers should be at summer league and spend the summer working out with the team trying to build on the steps he started to make at the end of this season. He’s still a project, this is just an interruption in the plan.
