Interesting tweet to ESPN article: NBA young players are suffering injuries related to wear & tear at an alarming rate

[Michael Jackson]

Maybe part of it is that they have no ramp-up really from HS level to grueling pro schedule. Years ago a guy would ramp up in college for a few years while increasing strength and endurance.

It's very hard for me to believe that the 19 year olds of today are stronger or have better endurance than the 21 year olds of the past.

I think there is something to this for sure.

[DuckIII]

I cannot wait to read this article and thread to get involved in the conversation. I've read a lot about youth athletics and training the last few years (the mental and physical toll of where things are trending) because all three of my sons are heavily into sports. I'm interested in everyone's thoughts.

[Axolotl]

Overdoing anything is bad. Drinking too much water is lethal - heck, even breathing too much can kill you.

[R3AL1TY]

Not a surprise...the style of the game now is to out pace the other team for 82 games. More speed = more potential for injuries IMO. Then like what a couple individuals mentioned in this thread already, many players are entering the league sooner, so you have more players with less developed bodies at risk.

[Hold That]

Over played(AAU) and over training


It has everything to do with these kids having so much mileage on their bodies way more than what athletes who entered the league of the past did.

These kids are playing year round basketball on AAU and traveling teams. We are talking 3 games in a day sometimes against high level national competition at the high school level. There bodies are overworked at this point.

It’s almost like how almost none of those kid pitchers from the little league World Series hardly ever make the pros because their arms are burnt out by the time they finish HS..

It’s crazy how many games these prospects play coming out of High school and on top of the training they put in. Doing pro level training hiring pro level trainers and doing pro level moves on a amateur body.

[R3AL1TY]

Good point about the mileage too. If you add up those year round youth leagues + college + training, that's plenty wear and tear, especially when there is more speed to the game involved.

[Hold That]

Good point about the mileage too. If you add up those year round youth leagues + college + training, that's plenty wear and tear, especially when there is more speed to the game involved.

Honestly they play more games at a H.S+AAU level than they do at college level. I think people really over look the AAU aspect because the average fan isn’t following the H.S circuit level and it’s really a factory. Especially with all these camps that have popped up over the last 10 years. Becoming a pool of boosters college scouts and AAU coaches literally showcasing kids for cash. Just like the NBA is a business the H.S level for AAU is one as well.

[R3AL1TY]

Good point about the mileage too. If you add up those year round youth leagues + college + training, that's plenty wear and tear, especially when there is more speed to the game involved.

Honestly they play more games at a H.S+AAU level than they do at college level. I think people really over look the AAU aspect because the average fan isn’t following the H.S circuit level and it’s really a factory. Especially with all these camps that have popped up over the last 10 years. Becoming a pool of boosters college scouts and AAU coaches literally showcasing kids for cash. Just like the NBA is a business the H.S level for AAU is one as well.

Yeah, I consider HS and AAU as youth leagues

[TimRobbins]

If you're going to have 82 games, you need to play a 12 man rotation with no player playing more than 30 MPG during the regular season.

[coldfish]

NBA players are most definitely heavier, stronger and work harder in games than in the 80's. That's part of the issue but its not the big one, IMHO.

High school kids are sooooooo much bigger. In the 80's, your typical high schooler was skinny as hell. Even the big guys weren't all that big compared today. That's a critical period of time.

I'll take a step back. I'm an engineer and I deal with maintenance items regularly. Some high pressure (literal, like high psi) applications. If you take a material and regularly load it up to 20% of its yield point, it will last forever. Decades at least. If you load it up to 80% of its yield, the thing is going to break pretty soon. Its an exponential rate of breakdown where it seems to me that twice the load breaks down the supporting material eight times as fast.

I strongly suspect that the human body is the same thing. We take our kids' joints and muscles and have put them under significantly more load, significantly more often (year round intense training with bigger, stronger kids) and we wonder why they break down a lot faster.

And yeah, this is personal for me. Literally, last night my 16 year old kid was in the room with me and I heard several of his joints crack. He sounded like an old man and I asked him if he was OK. He admitted that his back hurts frequently. He does year-round training for soccer and should start varsity this year, which was his goal.

I seriously wonder if it is worth it and if I should have allowed it.

[TheStig]

I think the biggest issue is that guys are heavier (due to muscle) while running faster/jumping higher/changing directions quicker than ever before.

I don't think that's the case at all. We used to have beasts like Malone and actual centers out there and 2 bigs. I think the grappling and handchecking made it harder to score but it also limited the fast twitch and explosion moves that lead to these leg and knee issues. It's much more wide open and fast paced that lead to the knee and leg wear and tear imho.

[sco]

I think the biggest issue is that guys are heavier (due to muscle) while running faster/jumping higher/changing directions quicker than ever before.

I don't think that's the case at all. We used to have beasts like Malone and actual centers out there and 2 bigs. I think the grappling and handchecking made it harder to score but it also limited the fast twitch and explosion moves that lead to these leg and knee issues. It's much more wide open and fast paced that lead to the knee and leg wear and tear imho.

Sorta same issue. Dudes like Malone, et al weren't running all that hard. They'd use their butts and shoulders to back guys down in the paint and jog to other end.

[Michael Jackson]

Also Malone is an outlier. He was just a natural phenomenon who was meant to carry that size. Lebron is meant to carry his weight too. The problem is the guys not meant to carry it are getting hurt. There are more of them than there are the freak outlier of Malone’s Jordan’s Lebron etc...

[Michael Jackson]

If you're going to have 82 games, you need to play a 12 man rotation with no player playing more than 30 MPG during the regular season.

Honestly I don’t think the MPG is really an issue it is what they are doing off the court. The extra training. The summer they don’t rest they just try to bulk up or get faster etc... off days they over train. It’s literally millions of dollars at stake so I get why they do it but it still isn’t good.

[Axolotl]

Landing and changing directions at high speed is where the injuries usually happen. More weight means more impact force on landing and more torque on direction changes. More of those mean more stress on the ligaments, tendons, bones and muscles.

Unlike engineering structures, the living human body has the ability to strengthen itself and mend damage up to a point, but it needs time to do that. That's what load management is about.

These are finely tuned athletes that are pushing the human body to the extreme. Some bodies have, or develop, a weak point, and when pushed, it breaks. Sometimes there's no weak point, but a bad landing tears a perfectly fine ligament.

Injuries have always been a part of sports, and the harder the body is pushed and the less time it has to recover, the more likely the injuries become.

Harder, faster, stronger comes with a price.

[johnnyvann840]

Over training! The body has limits. The money is so big though everyone is trying to hack a new way to get faster etc...

Hey MJ, I have to ask this. I never realized until last night that your avatar was actually Ted Bundy (I was watching a documentary on him). WHY?

[johnnyvann840]

Also Malone is an outlier. He was just a natural phenomenon who was meant to carry that size. Lebron is meant to carry his weight too. The problem is the guys not meant to carry it are getting hurt. There are more of them than there are the freak outlier of Malone’s Jordan’s Lebron etc...

I agree. Look at D Rose.. he really started getting hurt a lot more when he bulked up... same with Joakim. It goes to Coldfish's theory on percentage of load capacity. So many of these kids are just artificially too big for their frames. I've always been a proponent of lean an mean. Get tone and definition and try to minimize bulk.

[Michael Jackson]

Over training! The body has limits. The money is so big though everyone is trying to hack a new way to get faster etc...

Hey MJ, I have to ask this. I never realized until last night that your avatar was actually Ted Bundy (I was watching a documentary on him). WHY?

Dude is beyond crazy. He gives me nightmares. Plus a big Janes Addiction fan in High School and Ted Just Admit It was an influential song

[johnnyvann840]

Over training! The body has limits. The money is so big though everyone is trying to hack a new way to get faster etc...

Hey MJ, I have to ask this. I never realized until last night that your avatar was actually Ted Bundy (I was watching a documentary on him). WHY?

Dude is beyond crazy. He gives me nightmares. Plus a big Janes Addiction fan in High School and Ted Just Admit It was an influential song

Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, that was one sick MFer. I watched "Conversations with a Killer", I'm about to start watching the Netflix movie with Zac Ephron playing him. It's called "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile". I'm in PHX right now and it's going to be 110, so it's either watch movies or hang in the pool.... or post on RGM.

Anyway, sorry to get so OT, everyone, I just had to ask.

[Shill]

I was having a similar conversation with a friend regarding the ubiquity of Tommy John surgeries in MLB.

He thought it was partly over-training, and partly because pitchers today generally throw harder with a lot more movement. The added velocity and torque adds a lot of strain, and the human arm just wasn’t built for it.

WRT the NBA, I’d say it’s the over-training, the increase in pace (the SSOL Suns would be in the bottom half in pace), bulked-up and tightly-wound athletes, and perhaps more emphasis on acute lateral moves like killer crossovers and Eurosteps.

When you add it all up, there’s probably a slight increase in injury probability, but a small increase can still be felt.