San Antonio Spurs: Keldon's Team USA promotion is a double-edged sword

The Dangers of sending Keldon Johnson to the 2020 Olympics

Now that it's set in stone, all San Antonio Spurs fans can do now is hope and pray Keldon can make it through the Olympics fully healthy. Keldon already missed some games last season when COVID-19 tore its way through the roster.

“I would say it sucked,” Johnson said to the media after missing 15 days fighting the virus.

Since then, it's safe to say the respiratory disease hasn't impacted Keldon's strength and conditioning very much.

While I'm sure Coach Popovich and the staff will do everything possible to keep their guys safe and healthy, that might not be such an easy task when staying somewhere like Tokyo. Per the Tokyo Metropolitan Government website, there is a high risk of a resurgence of the virus and positive cases have been growing by over 1,000 per day recently.

On top of coronavirus and potential variant strains, the Spurs also have to worry about a potential on-court injury to Keldon in Tokyo. Of course, that risk is always there whether you're playing internationally. balling in the Drew League, or even training alone at the gym.

So far in his NBA career, Johnson has only been sidelined from injuries the one time for healthy and safety protocols. Given his youth and conditioning, at least he's at low risk of something serious happening, but it's still always a very real possibility.

When taking everything into consideration, it's still a net positive in my mind to see Keldon headed to Tokyo. While there are certainly big risks involved, there are also big rewards. Go show the world what you've got, Mustang.