The best ability is availability in today’s NBA. It’s so hard to keep key players on the court these days.
There’s no specific reason why players have struggled to stay on court year after year over the last decade or so. Each injury is a situation with its own set of circumstances.
Teams have tried just about everything to keep players playing. We’ve seen the load management era of the NBA come and go. Teams were allowing their players rest days to ensure their long-term health as they matriculated deeper into the NBA season and the playoffs.
But that didn’t work. Injuries were still a thing. So, now, the league has new player participation rules that require players to play when they’re reasonably healthy. If they don’t, teams face punishments. Plus, the league’s new 65-game rule for awards supposedly incentivizes players to ensure they’re on the court.
As it turns out, that doesn’t seem to be working either.
Injuries around the NBA are up year over year, according to data from Jeff Stotts’ InStreetClothes injury tracker database.
Not only are injuries up, but they’re way up so far this season. This graphic from Sportico visualizes it for us.
In week 7 of NBA action, 310 total games were missed this season. Last year, at the same time, that number was only 127. As you can see from the graphic, the numbers have been up all season long, week-to-week.
There’s more. HoopsHype’s injury salary tracker shows us the last time some of the highest-paid players in the league last played basketball. There are a lot of really expensive players who’ve missed a lot of time so far this season.
SEE MORE: HoopsHype also tracked injuries for individual teams
Again, there’s no rhyme or reason to this. At least not any obvious one. There are certainly theories out there as to why players are so injured. Maybe it’s simply a matter of players being forced to play more because of the league’s new rules. Or maybe it’s just a trend inherent to this era in the NBA, where AAU basketball is so prevalent. Players play so much from early middle school up to the professional ranks.
It could also just be dumb luck! That’s more of where I lean at this point. We could fast forward to a month from now when some of these players are set to be healthy again and things might look completely different. We’ll have to wait and see.
I will say this, though: The “Shorten the NBA season” advocates out there can make one heck of a case today.
