Normal Amount of Injuries?

[Wizenheimer]

I'm trying to figure if the number of serious injuries are higher this year, or if it's just normal and I'm suffering from recency bias

* Gordon Hayward - miss the remainder of the season after having surgery to repair a dislocated left ankle and fractured tibia.
* Marcus Smart - suffered a laceration to his hand and is expected to be out of action until the middle of February.
* Kevin Love - non-displaced fracture of the fifth metacarpal in his left hand and is expected to miss six-to-eight weeks.
* Dion Waiters - season-ending surgery to repair instability in his left ankle and a pre-existing navicular bone fracture.
* Sheldon Mac - surgery to repair a torn left Achilles tendon and is expected to miss the entire 2017-18 season.
* John Wall - expected to miss six-to-eight weeks of action after having surgery on his left knee
* Jabari Parker - recovering from a torn ACL in his left knee
* Mirza Teletovic - Teletovic has surgery on his right knee and will remain sidelined for an undetermined length of time due to pulmonary emboli in both of his lungs. He is expected to miss at least two more months.

* Glenn Robinson III - surgery to repair medial and lateral ligaments in his left ankle; three-to-four months to heal.
* Markelle Fultz - recovering from a scapular muscle imbalance and soreness in his right shoulder. No timetable for return.
* Furkan Korkmaz - sidelined by a lisfranc injury and will be re-evaluated in four weeks.
* JJ Redick - a small cortical crack in the fibular head of his left leg and will be re-evaluated in 10 days to two weeks.
* Reggie Jackson - a Grade 3 right ankle sprain and will be sidelined for at least six-to-eight weeks.
* Jon Leuer - will likely miss the remainder of the season after having surgery to repair a left ankle sprain.
* Cody Zeller - surgery to repair a torn medial meniscus in his left knee
* Cameron Payne - surgery to repair a right foot injury and will likely be out of game action until the beginning of February
* Jeremy Lin - ruptured the patellar tendon in his right knee and will likely miss the remainder of the season
* Terrence Ross - sustained a sprained MCL and non-displaced fracture of the tibia plateau in his right knee and will likely require an extended absence to recover.

* Nikola Vucevic - suffered a hand injury and will be sidelined for another six weeks
* Jordan Bell - inflammation in his left ankle and will have an evaluation in the beginning of February.
* Rudy Gay - sidelined due to retrocalcaneal bursitis in his right heel; likely to remain out of action until the end of February.
* Kawhi Leonard - will miss an unknown length of time as he recovers from tendinopathy in his right quadriceps.
* Andre Roberson - ruptured left patellar tendon and will require surgery; expected to miss the remainder of the season.
* Alexis Ajinca - surgery on right patellar tendon; will likely miss the remainder of the season.
* Tony Allen - non-displaced left proximal fibula fracture and has suffered another setback in his recovery
* DeMarcus Cousins - Cousins ruptured his left Achilles tendon and will miss the remainder of the season.
* Solomon Hill - underwent surgery for a torn hamstring and it is uncertain if he will return sometime in February
* Paul Millsap Millsap had surgery to fix a torn ligament in his left wrist; likely to need up to three months to recover
* Patrick Beverley - had season-ending surgery to repair a micro-fracture and torn meniscus in his right knee.
* Austin Rivers - right Achilles strain and is expected to remain sidelined until at least the beginning of February.
* Dante Exum - surgery to stabilize the AC joint in his left shoulder and is without a definitive timetable for return.
* Thabo Sefolosha - season-ending surgery to repair an MCL injury to his right knee.
* Lonzo Ball - out of action while dealing with a left knee injury and will miss an extended period of time.
* Mike Conley - expected to miss the remainder of the season due to a small bone protrusion in his left heel.
* Chandler Parsons - sidelined due to soreness in his right knee and a timeline for his return has yet to be established
* Brandon Knight - surgery for a torn ACL and will miss the entire 2017-18 season.
* Alan Williams - surgery to repair a partial tear to the meniscus in his right knee; expected to miss six months
* Harry Giles - recovering from surgery on both knees and is expected to miss the remainder of the season.
* Frank Mason - partial tear of the plantar fasciitis tendon in his right heel and will likely need four-to-six weeks to recover
* Seth Curry - recovering from a stress reaction of his left tibia and the earliest he could return is sometime in February.
* Nerlens Noel - surgery to repair a torn ligament in his left thumb and there is no timetable for recovery.

that's just the current injury report; I'm sure I'm missing players that have missed major chunks of the 1st half of the season but are playing now

again, my question is if this is an unusually high numbers of serious injuries...or is it close to normal?

[Wickzki]

I think it's an abnormal amount of injuries for a singular season. Coincidentally, the NFL has also had a year from hell injury-wise.

It makes me wonder what's going on. Has there been a change to supplements, rule changes (not necessarily of the in-game variety) that have put players at risk, etc.

[DusterBuster]

Add another to the list tonight with a backup PG from Phoenix. A bit of a unknown, but a Hayward-esque level injury.

[Wickzki]

Poor Isaiah Canaan. God that injury was even more brutal than Hayward's.

[zzaj]

There is a theory being floated around, for about a decade now actually among sports nutritionists, that sports injuries are on the rise partially because of the huge uptick in soft drink and energy drink consumption amongst children in the '90s. The "Sprite" generation, so to speak. The theory is that culturally, current players drank more soda and energy drinks containing sugar and caffeine which weakens bones, dries out ligaments, etc...vs. generations prior who drank milk, water and juice.

There are plenty of books written about the subject. If you Google the concept lots of interesting stuff comes up. I'm not sure I completely buy into it, but it seems like a reasonable factor in a very complicated issue. FWIW, I think lack of resting phase after extra curricular, incredibly specific workout regimens are a contributing reason we are seeing more injuries across all sports.

[PDXKnight]

It seems like players are playing till 40 more than they ever have and that career length has a progressively gotten longer over time.

Personally I think the injuries this year are somewhat of an anomaly rather than a trend but at the same time I think it's normal for a lot of guys get injured (especially 1 month type of injuries) over the course of an 82 game season. I'd be interested to see how much shorter the list is if it only has season ending injuries.

[Wizenheimer]

Add another to the list tonight with a backup PG from Phoenix. A bit of a unknown, but a Hayward-esque level injury.

I had my mouse ready to click on the video, but decided I didn't need to see it. I've seem more then enough cringe-worthy injuries

[Wizenheimer]

now it's Malcolm Brogdon out 6-8 weeks with a torn quad tendon

and I forgot about Jabari Parker in my list

[DusterBuster]

Speaking of injuries... What ever happened to microfracture surgeries? Seemed like there was one a year at least from like 2004-2010, and now you hardly ever hear of players needing that procedure anymore...

[Wizenheimer]

Speaking of injuries... What ever happened to microfracture surgeries? Seemed like there was one a year at least from like 2004-2010, and now you hardly ever hear of players needing that procedure anymore...

good question and I don't know the answer

I did find this:

The microfracturing technique has started to be used in the ’80s using equine models. The basic principle of microfracturing is to stimulate cartilage repair, not regeneration. It represents the first line of therapy for cartilage defects that affect its full thickness. The advantages of microfracturing are: it is a minimally invasive procedure, technical simplicity, decreased surgical morbidity, and low costs, thus making it a common procedure. However, microfracturing is not a bulletproof technique. There is a high rate of treatment failure after 5 years. Constant decline of the outcome during the 5-year follow-up after surgery is also described.

The best results are obtained in young patients, small lesions and low-demand patients.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311152548_Do_Microfractures_Work

I'm not sure what they mean by "low demand" patients but I'd wager that NBA athletes don't match the description

I'd also wager that if there is a high rate of failure after 5 years, using the technique on a 20 year old, 7', 270 pound young man like Greg Oden might have been a mistake
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another article implies that micro-fracture is an obsolete procedure:

For decades, microfracture surgery—pricking holes in the knee bone to stimulate tissue regrowth—was the gold-standard repair. But the fibrocartilage that forms is stiffer than the knee’s hyaline cartilage, impeding a return to elite play. “So many new procedures coming out are superior,” says orthopedist Joshua Harris, who studied microfracture’s impact on the NBA.

To fix a lesion, doctors use osteochondral autograft transplant surgery (OATS) to transfer cartilage from a non-load-bearing section of the patient’s knee. Riley Williams, director of the Institute for Cartilage Repair at the Hospital for Special Surgery, says that unlike microfracture, this method implants the collagen-rich hyaline necessary to continue competing at the highest level. After undergoing OATS, 75 percent of athletes under age 25 maintained the same level of physical activity, compared to 37 percent who had undergone microfracture.

Used to treat large injuries, autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI) involves harvesting cartilage from the patient and culturing the cells in a lab for several weeks. The new cells are then placed on a biodegradable matrix and glued to the damaged area. The two-step process requires open surgery and up to a year of rehab, which dissuades some athletes. “It’s difficult to convince people that an ACI is their best option,” says orthopedic surgeon Andreas Gomoll at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, even though it’s a more durable fix than microfracture.

and from Europe:

Though not yet available in the U.S., matrix-induced ACI (MACI) and NeoCart both show great promise in Europe. MACI is essentially a one-step ACI: Because it’s completed during a single surgery, rehab time is minimal. Similarly, NeoCart, which is undergoing FDA trials, implants collagen on a biodegradable scaffold. Some studies have shown that non-athletes who underwent NeoCart recovered faster than microfracture patients. “Once good cartilage products become available, microfracture could become obsolete,” says Charles Roth of the Andrews Institute for Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine.

https://www.popsci.com/article/science/building-better-knees-nba

[Blazinaway]

Porzingis went down tonight, looked pretty bad

[DusterBuster]

Porzingis went down tonight, looked pretty bad

Another torn ACL....

[Wizenheimer]

Porzingis went down tonight, looked pretty bad

Another torn ACL....

damn....this season can't end soon enough

[Wizenheimer]

apparently, the rash of injuries is not just my perception

So far, the number of injuries and the total games lost because of them have risen significantly compared to seasons past.

Through last Friday, there were 3,798 games missed due to injury, up 42 percent from the same portion of games last season, according to injury-tracking website ManGamesLost.com. That echoes the research of injury tracker Jeff Stotts of InStreetClothes.com, who noted in late January that the NBA reached 3,000 games lost due to injury about a month faster than it did last season. And that was before Cousins, Roberson and Porzingis went down for the year.

By some teams' estimations, games lost due to injury could skyrocket to a 50 percent increase by season's end compared to 2016-17. Remember, the Porzingis injury has only just begun to count toward that total.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2758891

[PDX MM]

Injury rate has increased at the same time as game pace as increased.

[zzaj]

Injury rate has increased at the same time as game pace as increased.

Yep. Game pace, mixed with child/teen nutrition in the 90s and early 00s, and not taking enough time off from workouts (which seems to be increasing as the NBA money is increasing) are the main contributing factors. IMO, the number of preseason games isn't much of a factor.