The Rockets announced on March 30 that perpetual annoyance Patrick Beverley will miss the remainder of the regular season with a wrist injury. Recently Badger sat down with Fox Houston's Marc Berman to talk about how things are going and not surprising, Badger wants to come back for the playoffs.
Beverley tore a few ligaments in his left wrist against Indiana on March 23 when he left the game midway through the third quarter. He had surgery to repair the ligaments and is looking at a May 18-20 window to remove the cast. That would mean that he'd be able to come back in time to play in the Western Conference Finals if the Rockets make it that far, which is of course not guaranteed.
The cast may be removed around that time but whether he will be an effective basketball player immediately after that is another conversation altogether. Badger will almost certainly have to play through pain but that's something he's pretty much used to considering he has a hole in his soul that will never be filled with anything the material world has to offer.
I don't doubt Beverley's sincerity when he says he has the heart of a champion and that watching your teammates play a basketball game without you is akin to seeing siblings in a fight and being unable to help them. But we'd be naive to think that Beverley's contract status doesn't come into play here.
Beverley is set to become a restricted free agent this off season and as a second round pick his 915,243 base salary ranks him as the 70th highest paid point guard in the league. They'd be no better way to inflate his stock than coming in and playing an integral part in shutting down someone like Stephen Curry or Chris Paul in the conference finals.
EDIT: This article originally misidentified Golden State's Stephen Curry with Pheonix's Seth Curry because I'm a dumbass. Feel free to let me know the extent of my dumbassery in the comments.