New Bulls Sports Medicine & training staff discussion

[MalagaBulls]

OK, a very important part of the FO & direct team staff.

Tanaka is the current on the ground trainer & Chip Schaefer is the Sports Medicine Director. With the fiascos we have endured with regards to injuries, rehab & timelime transparency we also need to clean house.
I like the following:

1. Director of Sports medicine: David Cuál
Famous sports doctor well blown for diagnosing injuries, rehab and a major source of knowledge for sports injuries.
2. Athletic trainer: Chris Kotures- Florida based Sports MD. Has worked with Olympic volleyball, table tennis, & figure skating teams.

My 2 cents, what are your opinions on who should be hired?

[SalmonsSuperfan]

tanaka stays.

give him every job.

make him gm imo

suggesting he be fired should be a bannable offense imo

team jeff

[chicago paxsons]

I can’t say if tanaka is bad at his job or not, but for years there has been injury mismanagement and misdiagnoses. Players are always injured and there injuries always last longer than originally thought. I don’t know if tanaka is the problem, it may be what the fo tells the media that puts him in a bad light. Also maybe the bulls don’t do injury preventative training? It seems to me the problem is the medical staff, but I can’t say they are alone to blame for all the injuries.

[HomoSapien]

It's impossible for me to come up with names for this, but I would strongly consider poaching the Suns voodoo doctors that breathed new life into Steve Nash.

[drosestruts]

I think the hate for the training and medicine staff is overblown and often from a place of ignorance. None of us really know what's going on with those situations, people have wrongly blamed the Bulls staff for misdiagnoses or other medical things around here that have long been debunked to not be true.

Jeff Tanaka's not out there giving Luol Deng spinal taps and botching Mirotic's appendix surgery or breaking Derrick Rose's face in practice.

I'm also not sure the Bulls are significantly more injured than any other team, the issues always seem very anecdotal and we as Bulls fans obviously pay more attention to the injuries to players on the Bulls.

[gardenofsound]

I think Chip needs to be consulted on what he thinks may be the issue. The man has been responsible for the health of several championship teams, all with great longevity.

I wonder if Phil Jackson's yoga sessions played a role in the Bulls' and Lakers' durability during that time.

[MrSparkle]

I think the hate for the training and medicine staff is overblown and often from a place of ignorance. None of us really know what's going on with those situations, people have wrongly blamed the Bulls staff for misdiagnoses or other medical things around here that have long been debunked to not be true.

Jeff Tanaka's not out there giving Luol Deng spinal taps and botching Mirotic's appendix surgery or breaking Derrick Rose's face in practice.

I'm also not sure the Bulls are significantly more injured than any other team, the issues always seem very anecdotal and we as Bulls fans obviously pay more attention to the injuries to players on the Bulls.

I have reason to suspect the Bulls medical team, but ultimately think injuries have to do with personal player training, coaching style and player skill.

IMO if you play good team ball with smart geometry, there’s less need for individual players to manically force and create things off-the-dribble, in traffic. I think back to Jimmy hyperextending his knee; he drove into such a mess of traffic, and the Hoiberg half-court offense was just so non-existent all game.

But then individually he’s such a skilled and well-trained player, he came back like nothing ever happened. Contrast that with Noah, whose game entirely depended on his speed and length (energy, rebounding, blocking, hustle): he never really put the freak work on his jumpshot, offensive scoring move, let alone his conditioning, off-season training and diet and as such, was useless when his body started slowing down.

Kobe played through so many injuries, but he was just so skilled and such a training hawk that it never stopped him until the achilles really took him down. Same with Nash.

All injuries are different, but ultimately Rose for example was asked to do too much individually, and he obviously had no injury prevention training and diet regiment, and he also didn't have the shooting/passing skills to compensate once he did come back (now he does). Hindsight’s 20/20 but while i think the staff is partially to blame, Rose the player didn’t take steps to prevent the ACL, which is also an issue when a 22yo is anointed team leader and mvp. Most players reach that status at 27-30, and realize their bodies aren’t invincible. It was unfortunate and even a stroke of bad luck that the injury happened, but there are a lot of factors before and after that made it worse than it could've been. I don’t blame Thibs but there should’ve been someone on that training staff warning both Rose and Thibs of the possibility. I know I always held me breathe on those 20mph unicorn drives with hard brakes to fake out sprinting defenders, and the hang time he’d get in the paint.

So I will say, you can't "control" injuries, but you can do your best to prevent them. Whether the Bulls staff has done that is a legitimate question. But you also have to realize, we have about as many injuries as most teams in the league. Just look at the list of ACL tears. My issue is that GarPax have been too quick to blame injuries, when they've had roster builds with about 5 throwaway players or borderline G-League talent every year, so nobody can step up and compete. Compare it to Indiana, Denver, Portland, these guys all have key starters getting major season-ending injuries, but they keep pushing on because they've had legitimate depth the last few years. Not Cameron Paynes, Felicios, Kornets and Arcis.

[dougthonus]

There's different people involved with the medical stuff going on:

Misdiagnoses and bad time tables for return are related to the medical staff which I assume is outsourced and not full time (guys like Brian Cole).

There is a preventative care team like whomever that woman we hired to work with Derrick Rose that focuses on things related to that, and they would deal with things of that nature (not sure if we still have anyone in this position, but I thought we did).

There is the training staff, which I'd guess is just helping with your day to day soreness, and I'm not sure whether there's any reason to think these guys are doing a bad job in this area or not.

Either way, improving how the Bulls prevent and manage injuries seems like something they need to do. Just not sure you're barking up the right tree with the guys you're looking at.

[mtron32]

There were two occasions where Bulls players were on the floor in pain and that ahole was nowhere to be found. AK needs to regulate the training as well.

[SHO'NUFF]

Get rid of em!!!

[Jiipee84]

Time to fire whole staff and hire real pro's to do those jobs.
Bulls new sports medicine and trainer staff needs to match all 2020 quality standards.

[coldfish]

I'll pipe in with the perspective from a different sport.

Liverpool Football Club was having all kinds of problems with injuries before Klopp took over and then for a year or so after. "Out with pulled hamstring" was practically a way of life for the players. The organization completely revamped its medical staff. They added metrics, did evaluations, tracked players, etc. There have been interviews on it and they know that there are "warning zones" that players can get into which drastically increase the odds for non contact stress injuries. Since they have implemented these changes, the club has seen a radical sharp decrease in injuries. It still happens but many times less.

Chicago's medical system needs a similar revamp. I'm certainly not an expert but I have seen the results.

[chefo]

I'll pipe in with the perspective from a different sport.

Liverpool Football Club was having all kinds of problems with injuries before Klopp took over and then for a year or so after. "Out with pulled hamstring" was practically a way of life for the players. The organization completely revamped its medical staff. They added metrics, did evaluations, tracked players, etc. There have been interviews on it and they know that there are "warning zones" that players can get into which drastically increase the odds for non contact stress injuries. Since they have implemented these changes, the club has seen a radical sharp decrease in injuries. It still happens but many times less.

Chicago's medical system needs a similar revamp. I'm certainly not an expert but I have seen the results.

Amen to that. I've read how the most valuable franchises in the world (the big soccer clubs like Barca, Real, Bayern, the large UK clubs) approach player health and fitness, and season prep, and it is night and day compared to what little we know of the Bulls. I'm pretty sure the Dubs stole the ideas of how to handle their players from overseas soccer, which allowed them to keep some otherwise pretty brittle guys healthy for a 4-5 year span, until the sheer number of games finally overwhelmed them.

But on a separate note--go and see how much endurance training and short burst max effort training elite soccer teams go through during preseason and breaks. The constant press anywhere on the field style that these clubs like Liverpool do when in high level competition cannot be implemented without the players being in insanely good physical shape. The NBA equivalent would be a team-wide full court press for almost an entire game. This is not the put on 15 pounds routine the Bulls have been known for ever since LeBron started beating them annually a little over a decade ago.

I've never once heard Bulls, players or coaches, of talking about emphasizing endurance training, as exemplified by the mutiny when they were asked to do suicides. Obviously, endurance training had not been on the menu for a while, let alone daily 5ks or 10ks, in high altitude, for example. Which, BTW, also explains some of the struggles in 4th quarters, IMO--you can tell Zach is completely gassed by the 4th. Lauri usually by the late 3rd. The year before Rolo could barely walk by the late 4th and was missing 2 foot bunnies cause he couldn't even get off the ground.

[Michael Jackson]

It's impossible for me to come up with names for this, but I would strongly consider poaching the Suns voodoo doctors that breathed new life into Steve Nash.

Also Grant Hill

[Michael Jackson]

Honestly this has been my top priority in changes. The Bulls have great facilities... You want to attract players that is a huge thing, but to really attract players if you can offer the best medical staff which will lengthen and maximize their career and earning potential that is a huge selling point and to me is a no brainer. Hopefully this gets done.

[ChettheJet]

In the face of how many years now of such a large percentage of the roster getting injured for significant time there's an obligation to look at how things are being done. Since you're going to have new management they should be able to sit down and speak with the current medical staff about what their approach to training is and the new bosses, who come from different organizations, can evaluate and compare to the places they are coming from. This constant round robin of injuries can't just be dumb luck to bring in players that keep getting hurt