Give and Go: Injury Reports

Caron Butler has been the best player on one of my teams for the better part of this season. So like a lot of fantasy NBA players, I was pretty frustrated by the way the Wizards have handled his latest injury. For those who haven't been keeping close tabs, the updates went something like this:

Day 1: Ah, he tweaked his hip. He's day-to-day.

Day 2: He's day-to-day.

Day 3-10: He's day-to-day.

Day 11: He's got a torn something-or-other, he'll be out for a while.

(I'll leave the actual description of the injury and its ramifications to our esteemed colleague Mr. Russo.)

I don't know if the Wizards weren't being honest, or if they just didn't know the extent of the injury at first. But I can't help but think that they weren't being 100 percent straight with me. I imagine it's a similar feeling to what baseball owners went through with B.J. Ryan of the Blue Jays last season. (That was, "it's a sprain... it's a sprain... it's Tommy John surgery," for those who blocked out the details.)

So my question is... how much information do sports teams owe fans/fantasy players, where player injuries are concerned? On the one hand, there's an obvious competitive advantage to playing these things close to the vest. But on the other, there are any number of reasons that it's only fair for fans to know whether or not their favorite players are suiting up on a given night. If I'm dropping a couple hundred dollars on tickets to an NBA game, I want to have some assurance that I'm going to see Kobe Bryant and not Sasha Vujacic, y'know?

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