RealGMD: The Thread (NBA sports medicine megathread)

[Parraknick]

I own a couple of sports injury clinics in Sydney, Australia.

Maybe once we get this thread to say five pages, we can print it off and send it over to MSG. Get some meaningful change happening!

[Jalen Bluntson]

I own a couple of sports injury clinics in Sydney, Australia.

Maybe once we get this thread to say five pages, we can print it off and send it over to MSG. Get some meaningful change happening!

Ummm, so your opinion would carry some weight in this thread. What's your take?

[Gravy]

Can we open this up to other teams. I would like to know how the Magic have so many injuries with everyone except Banchero at 33 minutes and under.

Their athletic trainers need to be brought up on charges. The injury Paolo and Franz have is rare, somebody had them doing workouts they shouldn't be doing, since they have the same exact injury on the same exact side. Probably something stupid like deadlifting while on a bosu ball.

Magic workout room

[Knicksfan1992]

I want to preface that I am not a doctor nor do I have any professional medical training. Just using some of (my own) common sense and prior athletic and injury experience to form my opinion on this Knicks twitter/RealGM lightning rod of a topic.

My take on this has always been there's no way to really delineate what minutes threshold is too much that actually leads to injuries or poor performance. The Knicks organization themselves may have private research but, there's just not enough public info available for us to really have a solid take on it in my opinion and most of these takes end up just being confirmation biased filled in a way. (Either you like Thibs and are going to be able to look past his flaws or you think he's a bad coach and are going to hop on his lowest hanging fruit of a negative). I obviously lean towards the former but will try to be as objective as I can in what I say. If you played a sport at a high level, then you'll probably understand where I'm coming from. There's just too many variables at play for an every day sports fan to know for sure that Thibs is the root cause of our injury luck:

-A player's genetic pre-disposition to certain types of injuries. Some guys just end up being more injury prone than others. Doesn't really matter what they do or what their minutes load is. Example: it seems like Brunson has a hold your breath as a fan ankle sprain every 2 weeks lol. He probably either has weak ankle ligaments or just did it enough as a youth player that he’s more prone to turning it.
-Anybody who played a sport knows that the actual game/match/meet etc. is like 5-10% of what actually goes into being in the sport. I can’t imagine what the lifestyle for an actual professional athlete is. For fans to put such an emphasis on Thibs playing his guys 38-44 minutes instead of 32-38 minutes a night as to the reasons why guys get hurt seems like such a low effort “First Take” style argument that I see from people who I believe to be way more thoughtful than that. There’s the conditioning and training programs, the travel, the nutrition guidelines, the organized activities, the gear you wear, recovery techniques, your matchup/responsibility for the night of the game and a bunch of other variables people seem to just not really give a chit about when formulating an opinion on this but make a MASSIVE difference in long term injury prevention IMO.
-A player’s biomechanics may lead them to either being more or less prone to injury. The way a player lands on the ground, the gait of a player’s running stride, the force of how a player loads up or takes off from the ground, the body dimensions of a player, the flexibility of certain players, etc. All this stuff factors in to who can absorb certain hits, changes in direction and certain movements better than others.

Now with all that being said a game is by far the most intense thing we can judge these guys on so while I listed out a bunch of other variables, ultimately, none of them are going to take the toll that an intense NBA game will take and I will concede that Thibs probably pushes it too far sometimes. Even if you think there aren’t long term consequences to his actions. You could see , in game, that these guys can just get gassed. And if you’re gassed you’re going to most likely make mistakes.

While I don’t think there is a major difference between 35 and 40 minutes, in a vacuum, there is a difference in how you get to those totals and that’s where I think Thibs can fall short sometimes. For example, in the Thunder game most of the guys came out saying they were exhausted. Think about if your Mikal Bridges. You play 40+ minutes with limited breaks and your minutes are mostly tied to having to guard SGA which means you are going to be the focal point defensively… Oh and also we need you to create offense when one of Towns or Brunson isn’t on the floor. Of course you’re going to be exhausted come the 4th! Anybody who has ever played basketball knows that you can only sustain the energy for both ends of the ball for a limited amount of time. It will likely never change unless Leon finds a way to get up to 10 guys Thibs can at least trust to throw in when there’s not an injury crisis but this is where someone has to have a grown man convo with him and basically say you need to find a way to get those guys even a couple minutes more of a break especially when they have a tough assignment on defense.

[Jalen Bluntson]

I want to preface that I am not a doctor nor do I have any professional medical training. Just using some of (my own) common sense and prior athletic and injury experience to form my opinion on this Knicks twitter/RealGM lightning rod of a topic.

My take on this has always been there's no way to really delineate what minutes threshold is too much that actually leads to injuries or poor performance. The Knicks organization themselves may have private research but, there's just not enough public info available for us to really have a solid take on it in my opinion and most of these takes end up just being confirmation biased filled in a way. (Either you like Thibs and are going to be able to look past his flaws or you think he's a bad coach and are going to hop on his lowest hanging fruit of a negative). I obviously lean towards the former but will try to be as objective as I can in what I say. If you played a sport at a high level, then you'll probably understand where I'm coming from. There's just too many variables at play for an every day sports fan to know for sure that Thibs is the root cause of our injury luck:

-A player's genetic pre-disposition to certain types of injuries. Some guys just end up being more injury prone than others. Doesn't really matter what they do or what their minutes load is. Example: it seems like Brunson has a hold your breath as a fan ankle sprain every 2 weeks lol. He probably either has weak ankle ligaments or just did it enough as a youth player that he’s more prone to turning it.
-Anybody who played a sport knows that the actual game/match/meet etc. is like 5-10% of what actually goes into being in the sport. I can’t imagine what the lifestyle for an actual professional athlete is. For fans to put such an emphasis on Thibs playing his guys 38-44 minutes instead of 32-38 minutes a night as to the reasons why guys get hurt seems like such a low effort “First Take” style argument that I see from people who I believe to be way more thoughtful than that. There’s the conditioning and training programs, the travel, the nutrition guidelines, the organized activities, the gear you wear, recovery techniques, your matchup/responsibility for the night of the game and a bunch of other variables people seem to just not really give a chit about when formulating an opinion on this but make a MASSIVE difference in long term injury prevention IMO.
-A player’s biomechanics may lead them to either being more or less prone to injury. The way a player lands on the ground, the gait of a player’s running stride, the force of how a player loads up or takes off from the ground, the body dimensions of a player, the flexibility of certain players, etc. All this stuff factors in to who can absorb certain hits, changes in direction and certain movements better than others.

Now with all that being said a game is by far the most intense thing we can judge these guys on so while I listed out a bunch of other variables, ultimately, none of them are going to take the toll that an intense NBA game will take and I will concede that Thibs probably pushes it too far sometimes. Even if you think there aren’t long term consequences to his actions. You could see , in game, that these guys can just get gassed. And if you’re gassed you’re going to most likely make mistakes.

While I don’t think there is a major difference between 35 and 40 minutes, in a vacuum, there is a difference in how you get to those totals and that’s where I think Thibs can fall short sometimes. For example, in the Thunder game most of the guys came out saying they were exhausted. Think about if your Mikal Bridges. You play 40+ minutes with limited breaks and your minutes are mostly tied to having to guard SGA which means you are going to be the focal point defensively… Oh and also we need you to create offense when one of Towns or Brunson isn’t on the floor. Of course you’re going to be exhausted come the 4th! Anybody who has ever played basketball knows that you can only sustain the energy for both ends of the ball for a limited amount of time. It will likely never change unless Leon finds a way to get up to 10 guys Thibs can at least trust to throw in when there’s not an injury crisis but this is where someone has to have a grown man convo with him and basically say you need to find a way to get those guys even a couple minutes more of a break especially when they have a tough assignment on defense.

So you don't believe there is a threshold but, you believe Thibs crosses a threshold?

That's an awfully long post to say that you don't know anything but, you agree with both sides.

[louisorr]

I'm not sure there's a bigger indictment on Thibs than needing a dedicated medial thread

I'm no doctor but, there is one on here who has discussed this not too long ago. He agrees that Thibs is a mad man.

Playing a guy 42 minutes and then leaving him in late in a blow out after 37 minutes the very next night led to his injury. That same player said he was exhausted after the first game by the way. He suffers from a common overuse injury and he is playing the most minutes he has played in 7 years. Thibs was his coach last time he played this many minutes.

KAT and Brunson are the two most important pieces to this team. Brunson playing on a calf strain for a couple of weeks after playing on a bum ankle prior to that while also playing crazy minutes doesn't bode well for anyone arguing that it isn't Thibs fault.

The fact that we have limped into the playoffs every year under Thibs may also be a sign that he is hurting the team. The bench getting the least amount of minutes in 20 years might also tell you something is wrong. The fact that Thibs has ALWAYS run his teams like this is another sign there is something wrong.

This isn't the first time this has been a problem for Thibs led teams. Chicago and Minnesota fans have all said the same things many of us are saying. He overplays his starters and doesn't utilize his bench at all. We have seen it over and over the last 5 years. Why there needs to be a medical thread to have this discussion is beyond me. Like dakomish23 said, it's a rather telling indictment of the HC that we even have this thread.

OG hasn't played a full season in his career and he's playing 40+ a night and looks like he's toast the last few weeks. The entire team looks gassed in the 4th qtr too often for it to just be coincidence as well.

We have 3 guys in the top 7 most minutes played and I believe it was 4-5 in the top 10 at one point. Here we are in early January limping around trying to beat scrub teams and losing. We just watched a team that lost 5 of their best starting/rotation players go 10 deep on us and win a game we couldn't keep up in. That team was on a B2B FFS!

Again, I am no doctor but, the evidence has piled up into a mountain. Why is it so difficult to believe there is an issue with Thibs disgusting minutes distribution and lack of use of his bench? No other contender is doing this. I don't know if many other teams in general even do this but, it's been twenty years since a bench has been used this little. Most of the teams that are on the list are Thibs led teams.

We shouldn't need a medical degree to figure out what is staring us dead in the face. Something that has YEARS of evidence pointing to this problem. Thibs doesn't play his bench enough no matter who is on the team and, he overplays his starters way too much for regular season wins. His teams are always injured in the playoffs and he has never won a ring in his three stops. Not even with HOF/All Star stacked rosters that also fell apart under his watch.

Believe what you want but, circumstantial or not, the evidence is there. He doesn't give a fck about his players health. He doesn't give his bench enough time to build any chemistry and, he only plays them after his players get hurt. Then he expects them to start and/or play extended minutes immediately? We end up with games like the last three as a result. Missing key players and losing games we should win.

Post of the year.

[spree2kawhi]

But how can we make sure they’re really doctors before believing every word they say?

[Parraknick]

I own a couple of sports injury clinics in Sydney, Australia.

Maybe once we get this thread to say five pages, we can print it off and send it over to MSG. Get some meaningful change happening!

Ummm, so your opinion would carry some weight in this thread. What's your take?

The first thing I need to say is that because I don't have access to all the information that the team does, it is hard to say anything with certainty. In saying that, very little of what I see sits well with me. Most successful organisations focus on the big picture (winning games at the pointy end of the season). This is the thought that drives all decision making, especially during the middle of the season.

[Jalen Bluntson]

But how can we make sure they’re really doctors before believing every word they say?

Fck it! I'm going back in as a doctor!

[KnicksGadfly]

I want to preface that I am not a doctor nor do I have any professional medical training. Just using some of (my own) common sense and prior athletic and injury experience to form my opinion on this Knicks twitter/RealGM lightning rod of a topic.

My take on this has always been there's no way to really delineate what minutes threshold is too much that actually leads to injuries or poor performance. The Knicks organization themselves may have private research but, there's just not enough public info available for us to really have a solid take on it in my opinion and most of these takes end up just being confirmation biased filled in a way. (Either you like Thibs and are going to be able to look past his flaws or you think he's a bad coach and are going to hop on his lowest hanging fruit of a negative). I obviously lean towards the former but will try to be as objective as I can in what I say. If you played a sport at a high level, then you'll probably understand where I'm coming from. There's just too many variables at play for an every day sports fan to know for sure that Thibs is the root cause of our injury luck:

-A player's genetic pre-disposition to certain types of injuries. Some guys just end up being more injury prone than others. Doesn't really matter what they do or what their minutes load is. Example: it seems like Brunson has a hold your breath as a fan ankle sprain every 2 weeks lol. He probably either has weak ankle ligaments or just did it enough as a youth player that he’s more prone to turning it.
-Anybody who played a sport knows that the actual game/match/meet etc. is like 5-10% of what actually goes into being in the sport. I can’t imagine what the lifestyle for an actual professional athlete is. For fans to put such an emphasis on Thibs playing his guys 38-44 minutes instead of 32-38 minutes a night as to the reasons why guys get hurt seems like such a low effort “First Take” style argument that I see from people who I believe to be way more thoughtful than that. There’s the conditioning and training programs, the travel, the nutrition guidelines, the organized activities, the gear you wear, recovery techniques, your matchup/responsibility for the night of the game and a bunch of other variables people seem to just not really give a chit about when formulating an opinion on this but make a MASSIVE difference in long term injury prevention IMO.
-A player’s biomechanics may lead them to either being more or less prone to injury. The way a player lands on the ground, the gait of a player’s running stride, the force of how a player loads up or takes off from the ground, the body dimensions of a player, the flexibility of certain players, etc. All this stuff factors in to who can absorb certain hits, changes in direction and certain movements better than others.

Now with all that being said a game is by far the most intense thing we can judge these guys on so while I listed out a bunch of other variables, ultimately, none of them are going to take the toll that an intense NBA game will take and I will concede that Thibs probably pushes it too far sometimes. Even if you think there aren’t long term consequences to his actions. You could see , in game, that these guys can just get gassed. And if you’re gassed you’re going to most likely make mistakes.

While I don’t think there is a major difference between 35 and 40 minutes, in a vacuum, there is a difference in how you get to those totals and that’s where I think Thibs can fall short sometimes. For example, in the Thunder game most of the guys came out saying they were exhausted. Think about if your Mikal Bridges. You play 40+ minutes with limited breaks and your minutes are mostly tied to having to guard SGA which means you are going to be the focal point defensively… Oh and also we need you to create offense when one of Towns or Brunson isn’t on the floor. Of course you’re going to be exhausted come the 4th! Anybody who has ever played basketball knows that you can only sustain the energy for both ends of the ball for a limited amount of time. It will likely never change unless Leon finds a way to get up to 10 guys Thibs can at least trust to throw in when there’s not an injury crisis but this is where someone has to have a grown man convo with him and basically say you need to find a way to get those guys even a couple minutes more of a break especially when they have a tough assignment on defense.

I do agree what a lot of what you say - there’s a lot of factors that go into when people get hurt.

I respect that. My only issue is with all the people here who will take all your arguments and then take that to mean “minutes don’t matter.”

Even the use of Orlando as an example doesn’t make sense to me. Yes, Orlando has gotten injuries. No, that does not mean that just because they’ve gotten injuries to Paolo or Franz, that they should take that as permission to play Franz and Paolo a crapton during games. But even Orlando understands. That’s why they have Jonathan Isaac on a limit right now.

[Jalen Bluntson]

I own a couple of sports injury clinics in Sydney, Australia.

Maybe once we get this thread to say five pages, we can print it off and send it over to MSG. Get some meaningful change happening!

Ummm, so your opinion would carry some weight in this thread. What's your take?

The first thing I need to say is that because I don't have access to all the information that the team does, it is hard to say anything with certainty. In saying that, very little of what I see sits well with me. Most successful organisations focus on the big picture (winning games at the pointy end of the season). This is the thought that drives all decision making, especially during the middle of the season.

Jesus. You really sound like a doctor!! Schedule further testing and make more appointments with the front desk!! Cha ching!

J/k brother. You already said enough. It doesn't sit well with you. Case closed!!

[Knicksfan1992]

I want to preface that I am not a doctor nor do I have any professional medical training. Just using some of (my own) common sense and prior athletic and injury experience to form my opinion on this Knicks twitter/RealGM lightning rod of a topic.

My take on this has always been there's no way to really delineate what minutes threshold is too much that actually leads to injuries or poor performance. The Knicks organization themselves may have private research but, there's just not enough public info available for us to really have a solid take on it in my opinion and most of these takes end up just being confirmation biased filled in a way. (Either you like Thibs and are going to be able to look past his flaws or you think he's a bad coach and are going to hop on his lowest hanging fruit of a negative). I obviously lean towards the former but will try to be as objective as I can in what I say. If you played a sport at a high level, then you'll probably understand where I'm coming from. There's just too many variables at play for an every day sports fan to know for sure that Thibs is the root cause of our injury luck:

-A player's genetic pre-disposition to certain types of injuries. Some guys just end up being more injury prone than others. Doesn't really matter what they do or what their minutes load is. Example: it seems like Brunson has a hold your breath as a fan ankle sprain every 2 weeks lol. He probably either has weak ankle ligaments or just did it enough as a youth player that he’s more prone to turning it.
-Anybody who played a sport knows that the actual game/match/meet etc. is like 5-10% of what actually goes into being in the sport. I can’t imagine what the lifestyle for an actual professional athlete is. For fans to put such an emphasis on Thibs playing his guys 38-44 minutes instead of 32-38 minutes a night as to the reasons why guys get hurt seems like such a low effort “First Take” style argument that I see from people who I believe to be way more thoughtful than that. There’s the conditioning and training programs, the travel, the nutrition guidelines, the organized activities, the gear you wear, recovery techniques, your matchup/responsibility for the night of the game and a bunch of other variables people seem to just not really give a chit about when formulating an opinion on this but make a MASSIVE difference in long term injury prevention IMO.
-A player’s biomechanics may lead them to either being more or less prone to injury. The way a player lands on the ground, the gait of a player’s running stride, the force of how a player loads up or takes off from the ground, the body dimensions of a player, the flexibility of certain players, etc. All this stuff factors in to who can absorb certain hits, changes in direction and certain movements better than others.

Now with all that being said a game is by far the most intense thing we can judge these guys on so while I listed out a bunch of other variables, ultimately, none of them are going to take the toll that an intense NBA game will take and I will concede that Thibs probably pushes it too far sometimes. Even if you think there aren’t long term consequences to his actions. You could see , in game, that these guys can just get gassed. And if you’re gassed you’re going to most likely make mistakes.

While I don’t think there is a major difference between 35 and 40 minutes, in a vacuum, there is a difference in how you get to those totals and that’s where I think Thibs can fall short sometimes. For example, in the Thunder game most of the guys came out saying they were exhausted. Think about if your Mikal Bridges. You play 40+ minutes with limited breaks and your minutes are mostly tied to having to guard SGA which means you are going to be the focal point defensively… Oh and also we need you to create offense when one of Towns or Brunson isn’t on the floor. Of course you’re going to be exhausted come the 4th! Anybody who has ever played basketball knows that you can only sustain the energy for both ends of the ball for a limited amount of time. It will likely never change unless Leon finds a way to get up to 10 guys Thibs can at least trust to throw in when there’s not an injury crisis but this is where someone has to have a grown man convo with him and basically say you need to find a way to get those guys even a couple minutes more of a break especially when they have a tough assignment on defense.

So you don't believe there is a threshold but, you believe Thibs crosses a threshold?

That's an awfully long post to say that you don't know anything but, you agree with both sides.

I am very much of a "see both sides" guy but I think there's a lot more grey area to this discussion then how it usually is framed!

Thibs pushes his guys to play more than your average coach but ultimately you're not seeing the full picture of what goes into these guy's day to day routines and preparations.

Just like any coach who will have been around as long as Thibs there are examples of guys who got hurt early in their careers and guys who had a very long and fruitful career.

Point being there isn't a magic threshold IMO because the human body is so unique. Or else we'd have way more continuity with minutes around the league

[Jalen Bluntson]

I want to preface that I am not a doctor nor do I have any professional medical training. Just using some of (my own) common sense and prior athletic and injury experience to form my opinion on this Knicks twitter/RealGM lightning rod of a topic.

My take on this has always been there's no way to really delineate what minutes threshold is too much that actually leads to injuries or poor performance. The Knicks organization themselves may have private research but, there's just not enough public info available for us to really have a solid take on it in my opinion and most of these takes end up just being confirmation biased filled in a way. (Either you like Thibs and are going to be able to look past his flaws or you think he's a bad coach and are going to hop on his lowest hanging fruit of a negative). I obviously lean towards the former but will try to be as objective as I can in what I say. If you played a sport at a high level, then you'll probably understand where I'm coming from. There's just too many variables at play for an every day sports fan to know for sure that Thibs is the root cause of our injury luck:

-A player's genetic pre-disposition to certain types of injuries. Some guys just end up being more injury prone than others. Doesn't really matter what they do or what their minutes load is. Example: it seems like Brunson has a hold your breath as a fan ankle sprain every 2 weeks lol. He probably either has weak ankle ligaments or just did it enough as a youth player that he’s more prone to turning it.
-Anybody who played a sport knows that the actual game/match/meet etc. is like 5-10% of what actually goes into being in the sport. I can’t imagine what the lifestyle for an actual professional athlete is. For fans to put such an emphasis on Thibs playing his guys 38-44 minutes instead of 32-38 minutes a night as to the reasons why guys get hurt seems like such a low effort “First Take” style argument that I see from people who I believe to be way more thoughtful than that. There’s the conditioning and training programs, the travel, the nutrition guidelines, the organized activities, the gear you wear, recovery techniques, your matchup/responsibility for the night of the game and a bunch of other variables people seem to just not really give a chit about when formulating an opinion on this but make a MASSIVE difference in long term injury prevention IMO.
-A player’s biomechanics may lead them to either being more or less prone to injury. The way a player lands on the ground, the gait of a player’s running stride, the force of how a player loads up or takes off from the ground, the body dimensions of a player, the flexibility of certain players, etc. All this stuff factors in to who can absorb certain hits, changes in direction and certain movements better than others.

Now with all that being said a game is by far the most intense thing we can judge these guys on so while I listed out a bunch of other variables, ultimately, none of them are going to take the toll that an intense NBA game will take and I will concede that Thibs probably pushes it too far sometimes. Even if you think there aren’t long term consequences to his actions. You could see , in game, that these guys can just get gassed. And if you’re gassed you’re going to most likely make mistakes.

While I don’t think there is a major difference between 35 and 40 minutes, in a vacuum, there is a difference in how you get to those totals and that’s where I think Thibs can fall short sometimes. For example, in the Thunder game most of the guys came out saying they were exhausted. Think about if your Mikal Bridges. You play 40+ minutes with limited breaks and your minutes are mostly tied to having to guard SGA which means you are going to be the focal point defensively… Oh and also we need you to create offense when one of Towns or Brunson isn’t on the floor. Of course you’re going to be exhausted come the 4th! Anybody who has ever played basketball knows that you can only sustain the energy for both ends of the ball for a limited amount of time. It will likely never change unless Leon finds a way to get up to 10 guys Thibs can at least trust to throw in when there’s not an injury crisis but this is where someone has to have a grown man convo with him and basically say you need to find a way to get those guys even a couple minutes more of a break especially when they have a tough assignment on defense.

So you don't believe there is a threshold but, you believe Thibs crosses a threshold?

That's an awfully long post to say that you don't know anything but, you agree with both sides.

I am very much of a "see both sides" guy but I think there's a lot more grey area to this discussion then how it usually is framed!

Thibs pushes his guys to play more than your average coach but ultimately you're not seeing the full picture of what goes into these guy's day to day routines and preparations.

Just like any coach who will have been around as long as Thibs there are examples of guys who got hurt early in their careers and guys who had a very long and fruitful career.

Point being there isn't a magic threshold IMO because the human body is so unique. Or else we'd have way more continuity with minutes around the league

I'm messing with you obviously but, it's really not just injuries. We are being game planned for to just turn up the pace because teams know we will be tired. ALL of the 4th qtr stats bare this out in spades. We are falling apart late in almost every loss. Against scrubs. It's not sustainable even without the injury risks that are involved. Years of evidence from every team he has coached.

Then we can talk about the weak offense he runs and the archaic defense. He raised the floor and capped the ceiling with his antics. That's what most of us see. Square peg round hole is his MO.

[thebuzzardman]

I blame that Mavericks trainer. Brunson ailing, KAT all f*cked up. Probably here on a covert mission from Cuban.

[B8RcDeMktfxC]

I want to preface that I am not a doctor nor do I have any professional medical training. Just using some of (my own) common sense and prior athletic and injury experience to form my opinion on this Knicks twitter/RealGM lightning rod of a topic.

My take on this has always been there's no way to really delineate what minutes threshold is too much that actually leads to injuries or poor performance. The Knicks organization themselves may have private research but, there's just not enough public info available for us to really have a solid take on it in my opinion and most of these takes end up just being confirmation biased filled in a way. (Either you like Thibs and are going to be able to look past his flaws or you think he's a bad coach and are going to hop on his lowest hanging fruit of a negative). I obviously lean towards the former but will try to be as objective as I can in what I say. If you played a sport at a high level, then you'll probably understand where I'm coming from. There's just too many variables at play for an every day sports fan to know for sure that Thibs is the root cause of our injury luck:

-A player's genetic pre-disposition to certain types of injuries. Some guys just end up being more injury prone than others. Doesn't really matter what they do or what their minutes load is. Example: it seems like Brunson has a hold your breath as a fan ankle sprain every 2 weeks lol. He probably either has weak ankle ligaments or just did it enough as a youth player that he’s more prone to turning it.
-Anybody who played a sport knows that the actual game/match/meet etc. is like 5-10% of what actually goes into being in the sport. I can’t imagine what the lifestyle for an actual professional athlete is. For fans to put such an emphasis on Thibs playing his guys 38-44 minutes instead of 32-38 minutes a night as to the reasons why guys get hurt seems like such a low effort “First Take” style argument that I see from people who I believe to be way more thoughtful than that. There’s the conditioning and training programs, the travel, the nutrition guidelines, the organized activities, the gear you wear, recovery techniques, your matchup/responsibility for the night of the game and a bunch of other variables people seem to just not really give a chit about when formulating an opinion on this but make a MASSIVE difference in long term injury prevention IMO.
-A player’s biomechanics may lead them to either being more or less prone to injury. The way a player lands on the ground, the gait of a player’s running stride, the force of how a player loads up or takes off from the ground, the body dimensions of a player, the flexibility of certain players, etc. All this stuff factors in to who can absorb certain hits, changes in direction and certain movements better than others.

Now with all that being said a game is by far the most intense thing we can judge these guys on so while I listed out a bunch of other variables, ultimately, none of them are going to take the toll that an intense NBA game will take and I will concede that Thibs probably pushes it too far sometimes. Even if you think there aren’t long term consequences to his actions. You could see , in game, that these guys can just get gassed. And if you’re gassed you’re going to most likely make mistakes.

While I don’t think there is a major difference between 35 and 40 minutes, in a vacuum, there is a difference in how you get to those totals and that’s where I think Thibs can fall short sometimes. For example, in the Thunder game most of the guys came out saying they were exhausted. Think about if your Mikal Bridges. You play 40+ minutes with limited breaks and your minutes are mostly tied to having to guard SGA which means you are going to be the focal point defensively… Oh and also we need you to create offense when one of Towns or Brunson isn’t on the floor. Of course you’re going to be exhausted come the 4th! Anybody who has ever played basketball knows that you can only sustain the energy for both ends of the ball for a limited amount of time. It will likely never change unless Leon finds a way to get up to 10 guys Thibs can at least trust to throw in when there’s not an injury crisis but this is where someone has to have a grown man convo with him and basically say you need to find a way to get those guys even a couple minutes more of a break especially when they have a tough assignment on defense.

I do agree what a lot of what you say - there’s a lot of factors that go into when people get hurt.

I respect that. My only issue is with all the people here who will take all your arguments and then take that to mean “minutes don’t matter.”

Even the use of Orlando as an example doesn’t make sense to me. Yes, Orlando has gotten injuries. No, that does not mean that just because they’ve gotten injuries to Paolo or Franz, that they should take that as permission to play Franz and Paolo a crapton during games. But even Orlando understands. That’s why they have Jonathan Isaac on a limit right now.

That and the fact that Isaac is made of the finest glass. But, yes, you're obviously right overall.

[Context]

Has anybody in this thread played organized basket ball. Could be any school team, league or pro league?

[B8RcDeMktfxC]

Has anybody in this thread played organized basket ball. Could be any school team, league or pro league?

I imagine everyone has, right???

[Context]

Has anybody in this thread played organized basket ball. Could be any school team, league or pro league?

I imagine everyone has, right???

sometime I wonder...I just think its pretty obvious...when youre exhausted less shots go in. I dont get how guys at ths point debate
whats been following Thibs his entire career...

[Jeff Van Gully]

I own a couple of sports injury clinics in Sydney, Australia.

Maybe once we get this thread to say five pages, we can print it off and send it over to MSG. Get some meaningful change happening!

Ummm, so your opinion would carry some weight in this thread. What's your take?

The first thing I need to say is that because I don't have access to all the information that the team does, it is hard to say anything with certainty. In saying that, very little of what I see sits well with me. Most successful organisations focus on the big picture (winning games at the pointy end of the season). This is the thought that drives all decision making, especially during the middle of the season.

sincerely thank you for contributing to this conversation. was hoping you would.

[Parraknick]

Ummm, so your opinion would carry some weight in this thread. What's your take?

The first thing I need to say is that because I don't have access to all the information that the team does, it is hard to say anything with certainty. In saying that, very little of what I see sits well with me. Most successful organisations focus on the big picture (winning games at the pointy end of the season). This is the thought that drives all decision making, especially during the middle of the season.

sincerely thank you for contributing to this conversation. was hoping you would.

No problem! I didn’t add anything that most others are already saying.

My professional dealings are more frequently with rugby players, who play around 20 - 25 games per season (on average, one game per 9 days). But the principles are still similar.

I will say, the Knicks must have some extremely good S&C + rehab procedures going right now to have had a relatively clean bill of health to date. So hats off to them.

But from a strategy perspective, the minutes distribution is clearly leaving players completely spent and ineffective in key moments. My grave concern is that our ‘luck’ might run out very soon with regards to players being available.