The Official Site of Brandon Roy

Tue, May 4th 2010, 16:45

Brandon plans to play more this summer

At the end of last season, Brandon Roy was adamant that he would set aside a significant amount of time in the offseason to rest. After playing 2,903 regular season minutes during the 2008-09 season and an extra 238 physically-punishing playoff minutes in six games against the Houston Rockets, Roy was in need of some down time.

So he headed back to Seattle to relax, and hang out with his family, and lounge poolside and relax some more. Sometimes he road the bike and every now and then he lifted some weights, but when it came to basketball, Roy went cold turkey. Didn’t shoot. Didn’t play pick up games. Didn’t camp out at the Trail Blazers practice facility. And that was fine.

“I’ve beginning to come out of my rest phase,” said Roy in July of 2009, “but not really playing basketball. Just exercising. I’ll start biking again this month, lifting some weights. I feel like I’ve taken a good month, but I’m still a month away from playing basketball on court and shooting and things like that.”

So from mid-April — the end of Portland’s 2008-09 season — to sometime around the end of August, Roy didn’t play basketball in any meaningful way. And after playing 3,141 minutes in a six month period, that was probably a wise decision.

But this offseason, Roy is changing tack. Instead of sticking to non-basketball exercise, he’s taking up basketball much sooner after a “slow start” start to 2009-10 season, a start Roy says was slow due in part to his lack of basketball workouts during last offseason.

“I’m going to play more this summer,” said Roy. “I think I’ll play more. It’s just better for my rhythm. Basketball is something I can’t really stay away from. I just feel like I’m a better player when I’m always playing. I’ll be smart about, but I’ll play more basketball this summer.”

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