Paul Lee’s new season off to rough start with thumb injury

Paul Lee re-injures thumb in first game of season. PBA IMAGES

MANILA, Philippines—Paul Lee’s start to the 2019-2020 PBA season hit a bit of a snag in Magnolia’s first game of the year.

Magnolia not only lost 80-75 in overtime against TNT, but it also saw Lee get sidelined with an injury.

Lee was already nursing a sore right thumb prior to the match against the KaTropa when he aggravated it early in the third quarter of the PBA Philippine Cup game Sunday at Mall of Asia Arena.

“It’s just sad that I wasn’t able to help the team, but it does happen in games,” said Lee in Filipino. “That’s part of the job, so I’ll just wait for this to heal.”

Lee left the game at the 10:24 mark of the fourth quarter after his hand got slapped on a rebound play and he said that it will take at least a week for him to fully recover.

The shooting guard, however, said he’ll be ready to practice with Gilas Pilipinas on Monday but he would refrain from joining the scrimmages to allow his thumb to heal.

“It’ll take around a week and the only bad part here is it was hit again after it got snagged in my teammate’s jersey in practice,” said Lee who played for 13 minutes in the Hotshots’ season opener.

“I’ll be back, no problem, it just so happened that my thumb got hit earlier. The team assistants earlier asked me what I felt on my thumb and I told them that it was painful whenever I caught the ball so we decided that I’d sit the game out.”