No One Gets Out Alive: The NBA Is Playing Hurt

As the Toronto Raptors came down the stretch in the 2018-19 NBA season fans of there club were perplexed— and sometimes annoyed— by the number of days their star Kawhi Leonard was taking off for “maintenance”. There was a stretch for maintenance of a knee problem but often it was just a maintenance day to relieve the wear ’n tear on his body. Others carried the freight.

Those days were the talk of the league where, like NHL stars, NBA players were expected to play the full schedule unless attached to a gurney and a defibrillator. The debate died back when Leonard almost singlehandedly led the Raps to their first NBA title. To paraphrase, success has a thousand children but failure is an orphan.

If Raptors fans wanted even more justification for Leonard’s rest days they only had to look at the team they beat in the Finals. Any Toronto fan being honest would admit that their team would not have won the title had Golden State’s Big Three— Steph Curry, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson— been intact for the 2019 series. Only Curry played any significant minutes. The others were largely absent with injury.

Fans looking at that Raptors win— Toronto had its main weapons playing—will no doubt find an echo in this year’s postseason as the stars on the favoured teams are decimated by injury. One only had to look at the Brooklyn Nets as they were eliminated Saturday night in Game 7 by Milwaukee.

The Steve Nash-coached Nets were built around a Big Three— Durant, James Harden and Kyrie Irving. But as the final seconds ticked away in Brooklyn, Durant was the only one functioning at peak output. (And what an output. He scored 48 with nine rebounds, six assists, a steal and a block and forced OT with a dramatic jump shot with one second left in regulation.)

Someone who looked like Harden was playing. The dynamic scoring machine was plagued by a bad hamstring. Typical was Game 5 . He played 46 minutes, going 1-10 from the field for 5 points. In Game 7 he was a non-factor. Irving never played after suffering a high ankle sprain in game 4 against the Bucks.

So the Bucks won. Good for them. But, like Raps fans, Feat The Deer fans can wonder if they had enough to best a health Nets squad.

Elsewhere, Leonard himself appeared to tear up his knee in the Clippers’ game 4 against the Jazz. It’s rumoured he’s done for the season. In Philadelphia, star Joel Embiid suffered a small lateral meniscus tear in the first round against Washington and looks like a shadow of himself while playing through the injury. His teammate Ben Simmons rarely made it to the playoffs until the final Game 7 where the Sixers lost to a healthier Hawks team.

Utah’s Donovan Mitchell is fighting through an ankle injury. His teammate Mike suffered a hamstring injury and is not available for the series with the Clippers. And so on.

Eliminated teams have more of the same. The L.A. Lakers saw stars Anthony Davis and LeBron James sidelined/ hobbled by injuries as they were eliminated in the first round. Through Game 5 of the conference semifinals, 70 games were missed by qualifying players due to injury— fourth most since 1978.

You get the drift. Add in Covid-19 absences. The postseason feels like Saving Private Ryan as wounded players are systematically cut down. Bettors have learned to wait till tipoff to see who’s playing and who’s in civvies. And the number of total blowouts in games has soared.

Men’s Journal points out, “more players missed time to injury this year than in any season since at least 2009–10. All-Star players missed 19 percent of possible games this season, the highest rate ever.”

The NHL, too, has its injuries in the postseason, but nothing like the scourge afflicting star players— the one fans and networks want to see as the NBA seeks to rebuild credibility after its woke political infatuations.

What’s happening? Is this a condition brought on by a short offseason? Is it a Covid-19 ripple as players recover from the bubble experienced last season? Too many games in too short a span? Could Kawhi have been right that the stars need more down time during a season? Or is the athletic, high-wire style of play in the era of the three-pointer too much stress for the human body?

All have been cited as reasons. Let’s address too many games in a season: No doubt players would be healthier playing and travelling less during the regular season. But the players union agreed to these terms in negotiations with owners over Covid protocols. They only have themselves to blame. As in the NHL, owners would gladly reduce the game inventory if players would reduce their salary demands proportionately.

And yes, the drastic Covid regulations upended a lot of offseason conditioning. The champion Lakers played till October 11. Then the season resumed on December 22. Still, players didn’t bitch till it was too late and the injuries began. 

There’s no doubt that the lightning-paced, above-the-rim requirements of the new NBA game have taxed star players. While NHL star players might log 20-25 minutes in a big game, NBA stars can play 48 minutes and carry the major burden of the last few minutes in games.  The human body can only take so much.

Which leads to the unspoken issue: maybe, PED investigators might have recently caught up to a lot of the cheaters who’ve been able to use drugs and therapies to artificially strengthen against injury. As we saw when MLB caught up to the sticky-substance pitchers, there was an equivalent decline in pitching success in the time after. 

It could be that PEDs are having less success in carrying players through a grinding season like this one. The league seems too obsessed with benching false-positive players in its Covid cancellations. Whatever the reason the outcome is diminishing the spectacle of the game at the peak time of the season.

If they’re not too busy flacking for the Chinese politburo the NBA might want to seriously address these problems.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx