Injuries are an unfortunate part of any sports league and are something that teams are expected to anticipate, deal with, and overcome. The start of the 2024-2025 season, however, has brought up some concerns for the NBA as a league. There have been a substantial amount of injuries not just to regular players, but to star players of the league as well. Now, regular players getting injured is always unfortunate, but it’s just a fact that when star players get hurt and miss games this hurts the league. Fans come out and pay money to watch their favorite players play. They subscribe and turn on games to watch their favorite players play. If stars are out, then interest will wane even more for a league that is struggling with viewership numbers already.
The amount of games star players have missed is already higher at this point in the season than it was at the same point in the season last year. Star players are classified as players who have made the All-NBA team or NBA All-Star game in the last three seasons.
When it comes to all players missing games due to injuries, that number is already at 686 games for the season. That is 35% higher than 507 games at this point in the season last year and is up 16% compared to the 2022-2023 season at the same point.
Injury Issues in the NBA
NBA Current Injuries
There is a lot of social media and sports show talk about the amount of games players are missing and load management and how players these days are softer, but the increase in injuries over the past couple of seasons may be an indicator of underlying issues that the NBA may need to address. Let’s take a look at all the injuries of impactful players throughout the league:
Ja Morant – Hip subluxation and Pelvic Muscle Strain Malik Monk – Ankle
Paolo Banchero – Oblique Strain Jaylin Williams – Hamstring
Kevin Durant – Calf Mitchell Robinson – Ankle Surgery
Kawhi Leonard – Knee Herbert Jones – Shoulder
Zion Williamson – Hamstring Dejounte Murray – Broken Hand
Lonzo Ball – Wrist Jose Alvarado – Hamstring
Khris Middleton – Ankle Surgery Desmond Bane – Oblique
Chet Holmgren – Hip Fracture Tyrese Haliburton – Hamstring/Back
Joel Embiid – Knee Aaron Nesmith – Ankle
CJ McCollum – Abductor Strain Andrew Nembhard – Knee Tendinitis
Tyrese Maxey – Hamstring P.J. Washington – Knee Strain
Aaron Gordon – Calf Strain Miles Bridges – Hyperextended Knee
Scottie Barnes – Orbital Fracture Tre Mann – Back
Jimmy Butler – Ankle Kristaps Porzingis – Foot
Trae Young – Achilles Tendinitis Bogdan Bogdanovic – Hamstring
Now, do you see any reoccurring themes here? Besides Embiid and Leonard being on the injured list…again. There are a total of 30 injuries listed on this list. Only five of those injuries are from offseason recovery/surgery/previous season surgery. Four of those injuries happened during the season that affected bones or tendons directly. The other 21 injuries are all soft tissue injuries that occurred during the preseason or regular season. Over two-thirds of those injuries to impact players were soft tissue injuries. When you take every player that is on the injury report as of the time of writing this, November 13th, there are 101 players listed. 74 of those 101 are listed with soft tissue injuries.
Soft tissue injuries being the majority of injuries in the NBA make sense when you think about the game of basketball and how constant and explosive it is. Very similar to European Futbol with how often the soft tissue muscles are getting used and how much strain is on them. It seems like they are popping up a lot sooner and becoming a lot more severe though. This is bad news in general, but especially when the NBA is trying to push the Emirates NBA Cup. The NBA Cup will never become important if the stars are not playing due to injury or load management. This is also the core of the load management issue in the NBA today where they are giving star players extra rest days to avoid injury.
The problem with soft tissue injuries is that they can last for weeks, months, or even the rest of a player’s career and life. Soft tissue injuries can also be a precursor and cause of more severe injuries. Most knee ligament tears and Achilles tears start, apart from freak accidental collisions, as soft tissue muscle strains or weakened soft tissue muscles. Remember when Kevin Durant tore his Achilles? He had a calf strain first that never healed fully. Even this year Tyrese Haliburton has been rumored to be dealing with a bad lower back. Haliburton ended his playoff run because of a hamstring injury. If one muscle is strained or hurt then there will be other muscles that will pick up the slack, but that will eventually lead to that muscle getting hurt in the long run. Soft tissue injuries have always been a main concern for NBA players, but with how the NBA practice and training camp is set up it seems like they’ve been setting players up to fail. The bench and regular players are the first to feel the effects due to lack of athleticism compared to the stars, but now the issues are even catching up with the strongest and most athletic in the league.
What is the Cause?
So how do you prevent soft tissue muscle? First, you need to remember that injuries will happen. They can never be fully avoided, but they can be prevented as much as possible. The ways to prevent soft tissue damage that I think are not reasons for the NBA’s problems are hydration, stretch, and warm-ups. So the NBA doesn’t need to worry about those. The two most common ways for soft tissue issues are 1.) overexertion and 2.) poor conditioning. Load management has been a concept in the NBA for years and teams have all adjusted practices and training camps to avoid overexertion. However, soft tissue injuries are still getting worse and happening more often. By process of elimination, that leaves poor conditioning as the major factor. That isn’t poor conditioning as in running up and down the court, but rather conditioning of your muscles to be able to withstand the exertion over a full season.
Training camp and preseason are the major ways for players to get in shape and ready for the season. Below are the lengths of each major sports training camp/preseason length:
NBA – 3 weeks
NFL – 7 weeks
MLB – 8 weeks
NHL – 7-8 weeks
While each league has its own reasoning for their lengths, the NBA is on the shorter side. Add in the fact that a lot of players, specifically star players, don’t play in the preseason and there is not a lot of time for a player’s body to be ready for the start of the season. It seems simple enough, the NBA players need to condition their bodies more efficiently and recover more efficiently to last throughout the season. The NBA is faster, stronger, and more athletic now than it was even just 10 years ago. Training and recovery need to adapt.
What to do
So what should the NBA do? Take inspiration from across the pond just like with the Emirates NBA Cup. European futbol is the closest, it seems, to basketball when it comes to explosiveness and exertion on the muscles at a constant rate. They, while still having soft tissue injuries, don’t seem to have as big of a problem as the NBA does. Looking over at how they handle preseason, practice, and recovery would be a good start. For example, their training camp and preseason are at least four weeks. Twice as long as the NBAs.
It may also be worth looking into modern studies for recovery. Christian Watson of the Green Bay Packers was part of a study to help prevent soft tissue injuries and found out each of his hamstrings is on different levels when it comes to how much each can handle. He then changed his training routine to get them more balanced.
While all of the injuries to start this season are extremely unfortunate, there is hope that it will wake Adam Silver, the NBA, and the teams up to the issue that is presenting itself. Under Silver, the league has been known to lean into modern times and update how the league works. Hopefully practice, rest, and recovery for players will follow suit and we’ll see our favorite players out on the court more often than not.
Information provided by CBS Sports and Tom Haberstroh of Yahoo! Sports.
Main Image: Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
