NBA Injuries Have Nearly Doubled In This Year's Playoffs

The NBA’s been dealing with a painful storyline this postseason: More players getting injured in fewer games.

“Last year’s postseason [lasted] 89 games and finished with 109 man games lost to injury,” trainer Jeff Stotts told me.

(Stotts maintains a database of NBA injuries at InStreetClothes.com.)

“This year’s postseason total is 182 games lost in 78 games.”

And these aren’t minor injuries to forgettable players. You could assemble an All-Star team just using the NBA’s postseason injury list.

Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, and Kyle Korver all suffered season-ending injuries. John Wall, Chris Paul, Mike Conley, and Pau Gasol each missed crucial games.

And at times, the quality of play has obviously suffered.

“It’s a shame that a promising Finals has been high-jacked” by injuries, Brian Schmitz wrote in the Orlando Sentinel last week.

“On basketball’s grandest stage, the light is finally shining on an issue … too hastily swept under the rug: Serious injuries are crippling the league,” Ailene Voisin concluded in the Sacramento Bee.

For casual fans, the injuries haven’t been a huge issue—yet.

Each game in the NBA Finals has been close; the TV ratings have been through the roof.

But the injury problem has haunted every game. The Cleveland Cavaliers, already thinned out by injuries to Love, Irving, and Anderson Varejao, seem a LeBron James sprained ankle away from completely collapsing.

And while some of these injuries can be explained as flukes, a 91% year-over-year jump in games lost to injury appears to be statistically significant.

Experts say there are two drivers behind many NBA injuries, and specifically why the playoffs are especially dangerous for players.

NBA players are more vulnerable than before

The NBA maintains that the number of injuries didn’t spike this year, but analysts still spent much of the season puzzling over a slew of high-profile injuries.

“It’s harder to play a game now than it was 20 years ago,” SBNation’s Mike Prada argued on a podcast in March. Defenses are more taxing, scouting is more specific, and the players have generally gotten bigger and stronger, he pointed out.

NBA players also may be increasingly vulnerable to over-use injuries, as young basketball stars are worn down by year-round training, the growth of offseason camps and AAU basketball, and earlier entries into the NBA.

As a result, the average 25-year-old NBA star in 2015 likely has much more tread on his tires than an equivalent player from 1995.

“Here’s my theory,” trainer Tim Grover wrote in Sports Illustrated in December. “Players aren’t sustaining these injuries because of the games they’re playing; they’re getting injured because of the number of practices and games they’ve already played.”

“By the time they turn pro, there’s a good chance they’re already dealing with the early stages of injuries, some of which will be serious, even career-ending.”

Stotts agrees, noting that the speed of the NBA game — the hard starts and stops — could exacerbate existing injury issues.

“Throw in a bit of bad luck, and you begin setting the stage for injuries to occur,” he told me.

‘Playoff Basketball’ is inherently more risky

I’ve talked with NBA staffers and analysts who’ve said that the regular season and the postseason might as well be different sports. And while they’re half-joking, there’s definitely some truth: Given the high stakes, the behavior of coaches and players changes in the playoffs.

Key players get more playing time in the postseason. Teams shorten their rotations, relying more on their stars. For example, Jimmy Butler led the league in minutes per game during the regular season, averaging 38.7 mpg; that would rank 15th in the playoffs, where eight players have averaged more than 40 minutes per game. (Butler’s own playing time went up to 42.2 mpg.)

Players will play through smaller injuries, leaving them exposed to bigger ones. Even before his season-ending broken knee, Kyrie Irving repeatedly re-aggravated his knee tendonitis and was forced to miss multiple games.

The intensity of the games ramps up. Don’t be fooled: The NBA is a contact sport, especially in the postseason. I dug into the data a few years ago, and found that fouls per game — at least the ones that get called — surged by 15% in the playoffs.

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Source: Forbes