It's a long read, so...good luck.
I should explain my thought process in ranking these players the way I did.
I did not simply rank them in order of who was the greatest player pre-injury - Bernard King would be top 3 in that case.
I did not simply rank them in order of who lost the most time/had the shortest career - Jay Williams and Oden would top that list.
I tried to find a balance. I tried to rank them in order how much net greatness the game lost and how much the player's individual legacy was altered by injury. So you look at how great was the player before the injuries, and then how many potential years at that level were lost due to injury? A player who proved his greatness beyond doubt but didn't get to do it for long is the type of player I'd rank highest on this list. A player who didn't play for long and showed a lot of potential, but didn't prove his greatness, would rank lower. A player who proved his greatness, but had a longer time to do it before the injuries occurred, is imo the most difficult kind to rank here and, to be honest, there are only one or two of them on the list.
The list might not line up exactly with that criteria in your perception, but at the least that's what I was going for when ranking these players. This is obviously all my opinion and yours may(probably does) differ.
I should also specify that this list is specifically for players whose careers were derailed by injury, as opposed to disease(so no Magic/HIV or Mourning/Kidney disease) or death(Petrovic, Lewis, Bias, etc).
Honorable Mentions:
Tracy McGrady - I love T-Mac, and at his peak he was one of the league's greatest scorers and players, but I always see people bringing him up as an injury what-if and I don't really get it. He had had injury issues but they all came later on. He was mostly healthy the first 11 years of his career. I suppose he would've played a few more years were not for those injuries later in his career, but still. I feel like Grant Hill's injuries affected T-Mac's legacy more than T-Mac's own injuries did.
Amare Stoudemire - I know people often talk about him like he's an injury casualty, and I know he had knee surgery, and I know he lost some explosiveness, but at the end of the day, in his first ten years in the league, aside from 2005-06 when he had the surgery and only played 3 games, he didn't miss many games at all and he consistently put up good numbers. As late as that first year in New York - 2010-11 - he was playing like an MVP. To have 10 mostly good years before it starts falling apart as you enter your 30s, that just doesn't sound like a career that should be in the top 15 imo.
Brad Daugherty - He played eight years in the league, never averaging less than 15ppg or 8rpg, and going 20/10 three times. He had to retire after only eight seasons because of herniated disks in his back. He was a very good(but not great) and, frankly, underappreciated center, but even if he'd played a few more years, I don't see his legacy being drastically different. The Cavs were going downhill at that point and he was approaching 30.
Sam Bowie - I know his career got cut short, but the thing is - and bare in mind I wasn't old enough to have seen him play, I'm just looking at stats and thinking of things I've heard other people say - I'm just not sure he was that great even before the injuries. It seems like he was a good player. Solid. But not great. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know.
Shaun Livingston - I definitely thought of him because his injury happened pretty early in his career. If I were ranking players by how gruesome their injuries were, Livingston may well top the list. But Livingston was injured in his third year(after having been drafted out of high school) and had been consistently inconsistent by that point. He hadn't really shown all that much. I'm as happy as anyone that he ended up coming back and having a respectable NBA career, but he may have ended up being a career role player even if he hadn't gotten hurt.
Larry Bird - Don't laugh. I considered it for a minute. His back injury wrecked him his last 5-6 years, and it's conceivable, maybe even probable, that he could've played a few more years were it not for that. But he won three rings, played on the Dream Team, is given credit along with Magic and Michael for saving the league, and is generally considered a top 10 player of all time(and top 5 for a lot of people). Like, how much greater could his legacy be? Who I am I kidding, he doesn't belong on this list.
Fat Lever - Came the closest to making the list. Was going to be #15 before I realized that I'd forgotten about Andrew Bynum. A 6'3' guard, Lever had a period of 3 or 4 years with the Nuggets in the 80s where he was flirting with averaging a triple double. I wasn't old enough to have been aware of him at the time, but I see that a common modern comp is Westbrook. So Lever was one of the league's more exciting PGs in the late 80s - even if he wasn't on the level of a Magic or an Isiah - but he tore his ACL early in the 1991-92 season. He only played 35 games over the next three years, and even when he managed to play one last healthy season in 1993-94, he was never the same.
15. Jay Williams
In the early 00s, there were three different Jason Williams in the basketball world. There was "White Chocolate" Jason Williams who played for the Chris Webber Kings before being traded to Memphis for Mike Bibby and eventually finished his career by winning a ring on the 2006 Wade/Shaq Heat. There was Jayson "with a y" Williams who played for the Nets and later became infamous when he was convicted of an accidental murder.
Then there was Jason "call me Jay to avoid confusion" Williams. He became on the greatest college players ever in his four years at Duke. He won ACC Rookie Of The Year in 2000, won a national championship in 2001 with future pro teammates Carlos Boozer, Shane Battier, Mike Dunleavy Jr., and Chris Duhon, and won both the Naismith Player Of The Year award and the Wooden award in 2002.
He left Duke after his junior year and was drafted #2 overall by my Bulls. We were a terrible team, and in his one year with us, Williams didn't exactly set the world on fire, but there was definite potential. The most tantalizing moment happened just seven games into his career, on November 9, 2002, when he dropped a triple double - 26 points, 13 assists, and 14 rebounds, along with 2 steals - against Jason Kidd and the New Jersey Nets, who would on to the Finals that year.
His season was inconsistent, but moments like that, plus the fact that he was/is one of the most intelligent basketball players I've seen, suggested that he had what it took to be an elite player by his third or fourth year. It was not to be.
On June 19, 2003, two months into his first offseason, Williams crashed his motorcycle into a streetlight in Chicago, while unlicensed, while not wearing a helmet, and while in violation of his NBA contract. It was colossally stupid, as I think he is the first to admit. The only guy on this list where you can honestly say it was his fault. The damage: a torn ACL and two other torn ligaments in his left knee, a fractured pelvis, and a severed nerve in his leg. He never played in the NBA again. He tried to come back with the Nets in 2006 after three years of rehab, but he didn't make it out of the preseason.
Jay can't go any higher on this list because, like the next guy on the list, we just didn't see enough to know what he would've been. But there was certainly a ton of potential there.
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14. Greg Oden
The 2006 draft was the first draft in which players could not be drafted straight out of high school. But because there were no transcendent prospects in that class, it was not until the following year that Greg Oden and Kevin Durant became the first two can't-miss prospects of the one-and-done era.
Oden was endlessly hyped for a whole year. He was a 19 year old 7 footer with defensive prowess putting up 21/13 with 4 blocks per 40 minutes for Ohio State in the NCAA. Executives drooled over him. It seems crazy now, but he was the consensus #1 in the 2007 draft. Durant was also seen as a can't miss prospect, but hardly anyone thought he should go over Oden. You know, you can't teach height, all of that stuff.
So, on June 28, 2007, the Portland Trail Blazers selected Oden with the top pick, while the then-Seattle Supersonics took Durant with the second pick.
The trouble started right away. Oden had to redshirt his rookie season after having microfracture surgery on his right knee.
He joined the team for the 2008-09 season, during which he was relatively healthy, playing 61 games, in which he averaged 8.9ppg, 7rpg, and 1.1bpg in 21.5mpg. Two things here - one, he played a relatively small mpg. I guess there was a minutes limit or something, but the thing is he never played much more than that per game in his short career. Maybe they knew already that he couldn't handle it. The next best center on the roster was Joel Przybilla. He should have been playing more minutes if he was able. Extrapolated to PER 36 terms, Oden put up 14/11 and nearly 2 blocks that season, which isn't shabby at all for a 20 year old kid's first year. The other thing is that he did miss a 15-game stretch in February and March after chipping his kneecap in a collision with Corey Maggette.
He played underwhelmingly in his first - and only, other than a few games with Miami years later when he was only playing garbage minutes - playoff games
The feeling about Oden was cautiously optimistic heading into the 2009-10 season. He started out well, playing similarly to the previous season - good numbers, but limited minutes. He put up 11.1ppg, 8.5rpg, and 2.5bpg in 23.9mpg in 21 games. PER 36, it was 16/12 and 3 blocks.
Less than 5 minutes into the 21st game, it all came crashing down. Oden fractured his left patella on landing after jumping for a block. He was out for the season. He'd never play for the Blazers again.
A year later, in November 2010, he had his second microfracture surgery on the same left knee, although the injury was apparently unrelated to the patella fracture. He missed all of 2010-11 as well.
After suffering a setback that was never elaborated on further, Oden had arthroscopic surgery on both knees in February 2012, the second of which found more damage and, in turn, he had his third microfracture surgery.
By this point he was signed to his qualifying offer. The Blazers waived him in March.
He made a last-ditch comeback with the Miami Heat in the 2013-14 season, their last with LeBron. He played 9mpg in 23 regular season games as a reserve, putting up 2 points and 2 boards per, and he played garbage minutes in a few playoff games as well. But that was it. Future attempts to get back into the NBA failed. He did play in China in 2015-16.
We will never know if Oden would've been one of the dominant big men of his era or if would've been just a decent big man, but the potential was there for him to be huge.
13. Andrew Bynum
The Los Angeles Lakers 2004-05 season is often referred to as "The Rudy T Year". It was the first year after Shaq had been traded and the team that had won three titles and gone to four finals from 2000-2004 had been pretty much dismantled outside of Kobe. Phil Jackson had also walked away, and Rudy T was the head coach for half a season before he had to resign for health reasons. It was a terrible year for the Lakers, and it resulted in having the #10 overall pick. They used it on 18-year old, 7-foot center Andrew Bynum, straight out of high school in the last year that was allowed.
Bynum was raw, a project, and thought drafted in 2005, wouldn't really come into his own until his third year, 2007-08. He was more or less healthy for his first two seasons, as he was developing and working himself into the rotation. But in his third season, just as he was starting to come into his own, putting up 13/10 and 2 blocks per game in just 28 minutes per game, he dislocated his kneecap midway through the season in January, and was out for the year. It was the beginning of a years-long struggle that never ended, wherein Lakers fans were tortured with the prospect of Bynum always being just about to turn the corner as an elite center, but never being able to stay on the court long enough to do so.
The Lakers acquired Pau Gasol after Bynum went down, and he missed their run to the 2008 Finals, where they fell to the Celtics in 6 games.
He was back in 08-09, putting up similar numbers as the previous year, but again, midway through the season, he sustained what was initially thought to be a knee sprain, but ended up being a torn MCL, after a collision with Kobe, and missed several months. He returned for the 2009 playoffs, but he wasn't very effective, as he was still recovering.
He stayed relatively healthy throughout the 09-10 regular season, but he suffered torn cartilage in his knee in the first round vs the Oklahoma City Thunder. He played through the injury for the remainder of the playoffs, which earned the respect of his teammates, and had surgery in the summer.
He missed the beginning of 2010-11 due to the surgery, but once he came back, he had one the healthiest stretches of his career for the remainder of that season and the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season. In fact, the lockout year was the best year of his career, as he played and started in all but 4 games and put up 18/11 and 2 blocks in 35 minutes per game.
By this point though, Phil Jackson had retired, players were aging, and it was a time of transition. The Lakers wanted to give Kobe another chance to win before he got too old, so in the summer of 2012, they acquired Dwight Howard in a four-team deal that sent Bynum, now with one year left on his deal, to Philadelphia, in what turned out to be one of the worst trades ever made on Philadelphia's end.
Philly had shipped out future Finals MVP Andre Iguodala, up-and-coming center Nikola Vucevic, Maurice Harkless, and a 2018 1st for Bynum.
Bynum "underwent Orthokine treatments on both of his knees to stimulate healing for his arthritis" before training camp, and continued to be bothered by his knees during training camp. Long story short, he missed the whole season after eventually having arthroscopic surgery on both knees, which by this point were degenerating.
He never played a game for Philly. Meanwhile, Iggy played well enough in Denver that year to attract the attention of Golden State, where he ended up being an important player on multiple title winning teams. Vucevic averaged 13/11 and 1 block per game in 2012-13 and went on to become, not elite, but one of the better centers in the game. Even Harkless has had a consistent career as a 3&D guy.
Philly got nothing for any of it, won only 34 games in 2012-13, and the whole thing got executive Tony DiLeo fired after one season and ended up ushering in Hinkie and The Process.
You can say Bynum had been healthy for a season and half at that point, and Philly couldn't have known what would happen. But then you remember that the whole reason it was a four-team trade instead of a two-team trade is because Orlando didn't want Bynum, because they are unconvinced about his health(ok, and his upcoming FA status).
As for Bynum, he came back in 2013-14, but the injuries had robbed him of his game. He signed with Cleveland, and played a forgettable 24 games with them before being traded to the Bulls for Luol Deng. The Bulls waived him immediately, and he signed with the Paul George/Roy Hibbert Pacers, who were peaking about then. He played two games for them before "swelling and soreness" appeared in his right knee. He never played another NBA game.
Bynum was only 26 when he played his last NBA game. He had all the tools to be an elite center, but just could never quite put it together and stay healthy at the same time. It is worth noting though, that he also had some mental issues. Some thought he was a headcase, someone who didn't take the game seriously enough. So even if he had remained healthy, there is some question as to whether he would've had a significant impact on winning for anyone.
12. Andrew Toney
A sort of forgotten player, Toney played his whole career for Philadelphia. Drafted #8 overall in 1980, he came off the bench his first two seasons before becoming a starter in their legendary 1983 championship season. He was a feared scorer, particularly by their rival Boston Celtics. Celtics guard Danny Ainge once said that Toney, not Magic, not Isiah, but Toney, was the player he feared most, and based on an interesting anecdote that I just read, the whole reason the Celtics acquired Dennis Johnson in trade was to guard Toney in the playoffs. His nickname was "The Boston Strangler".
In three years as a starter, Toney put up 19.7ppg, 20.4ppg, and 17.8ppg. But late in that third season as a starter - 1984-85 - Toney began complaining of pain in his feet, and his production dropped. The team thought he was just making excuses and that he wasn't really injured. Finally, three games into the 1985-86 season, he was diagnosed with stress fractures in both feet. He had surgery on both, and played in only six games that season.
He played two more seasons after that, but only in a total of 81 regular season games combined due to continuing foot issues. He was never the same. He retired in 1988 after only eight seasons in the league, and remains bitter about the way the Sixers handled his injury.
11. Bernard King
I know there's going to be people who think King should be higher on this list. We all know the story. In the late 70s and early 80s, Bernard King emerged as one of the greatest pure scorers of all time. He bounced around playing for several teams - the Nets, Jazz, and Warriors - before landing on the Knicks in 1983. He was a star in New York. But 55 games into 1984-85, his third year as a Knick and eighth year in the league, at his absolute peak, putting up 32.9ppg, he suffered a torn ACL in an era when they were thought to be career-ending.
He missed the remainder of the season, the entire 1985-86 season, and most of the 1986-87 season recovering and rehabbing. He worked his ass off to prove that it wouldn't be career ending. He made it back for six games in April of 1987 at the very end of the season. He averaged 22.7ppg across those six games, and 30ppg in the last three, but the Knicks still didn't renew his contract.
I guess I can understand why the Knicks let him go. Signing him to a new contract when he was just coming back from an injury that no one had successfully come back from before probably seemed risky. Still when he played as well as he had for those six games, it feels like they gave up on him awfully quickly after he had just worked his ass off for two years to be able to get to this point again. The fact that he and Patrick Ewing never got to play together is the big what-if.
Anyway, he signed with the Washington Bullets and went on a four year run averaging 17.2ppg, 20.7ppg, 22.4ppg, and culminating with 28.4ppg and an all-star game appearance in 1990-91. He described that all-star game as being the happiest day of his life.
He had arthroscopic surgery to repair torn cartilage in the same knee in the fall of 1991 and missed the 1991-92 season. He came back for a brief and underwhelming stint with the Nets in 1992-93 and then called it a day.
The reason I don't have him higher than this is because he had one of the greatest injury comebacks in league history. Whereas most of the other players on this list went from being stars to mere starters or even role players after their injuries, King came back and was still a an all-star calibre player. Yes, he lacked the athleticism and explosiveness he'd had before, but the dude still came back from an ACL tear in the 80s and averaged 20+ppg three years in a row(20+ per 36 four years in a row) and made an all-star game. So it's true we were robbed of probably 2 or 3 seasons of peak King, but most of the other players on this list lost a lot more time. I'm just saying, most of the stories on this list are sad, but Bernard's story ends up actually being more inspiring than sad.
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Injury:
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First game back:
Segment on his making the all-star game in 1991:
10. Antonio McDyess
I feel like pre-injury McDyess is another largely forgotten player. Post-injury McDyess is remembered, but pre-injury McDyess rarely gets mentioned. He was an athletic freak, a monster dunker, a star. The #2 overall pick in the 1995 draft, he played six of his first seven seasons in Denver. Denver drafted him, and he showed promise right away, putting up 13 and 18ppg, respectively. Denver traded him to Phoenix before his third season in exchange for a bunch future draft picks; the most important result of this is that one of those picks was flipped to the Lakers for Nick Van Exel.
After playing a year in Phoenix, McDyess was a FA, and he returned to Denver to play with NVE. This second go-round with Denver is peak McDyess. He put up 21.2/10.7 with 2.3 blocks, 19.1/8.5 with 1.7 blocks, and 20.8/12.1 with 1.5 blocks for the 98-99, 99-00, and 00-01 seasons. Within this time frame, he also played on the 2000 Olympic team in Sydney, winning a gold medal.
Things soon took a bad turn. Early in the 2001-02 season - his seventh in the league, at age 27, right in the middle of his prime - he ruptured his left patellar tendon, and missed all but 10 games.
Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, the Nuggets traded for him for a second time, this time on draft night 2002 to the New York Knicks for Marcus Camby and the rights to Nene Hilario.
The Knicks would soon regret the trade. McDyess was ready to go for training camp, and came out looking good, averaging 17.7ppg and 13rpg in the first three games of preseason. But at the end of that third game, he fractured his left patella bone(i.e. kneecap) on landing after a dunk. It was the same knee he'd ruptured the tendon on. He missed the entire 2002-03 season.
After missing essentially two consecutive seasons to two consecutive injuries on the same knee, he was never the same. Midway through the 2003-04 season, the Knicks dealt him to Phoenix in the deal that brought Stephon Marbury to New York. After finishing the season with the Suns, the contract that McDyess had signed in 1999 expired, and he signed with the Detroit Pistons, who had just won a title.
For the next seven years, McDyess re-invented himself as an elite role player for contending teams in Detroit, and later, San Antonio. He was well-respected in that role, and that's the way a lot of people remember him. But let's not forget that he was once a star. The GOAT era for PFs - Duncan, Garnett, Dirk, Webber, Rasheed, etc - would've been even greater with a healthy McDyess.
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9. Brandon Roy
The #6 overall pick in the thoroughly underwhelming 2006 draft, Brandon Roy was selected by the Portland Trail Blazers, and when the team walked out of that draft with both him and LaMarcus Aldridge, and then Oden the following year, people thought the Blazers had a potential dynasty on their hands. If they only knew.
Ominously, Roy missed 20 games early in his rookie campaign to a heel injury, but he returned to play 57 games and looked very promising, 16 points, 4 assists, and 4 rebounds per game. These numbers increased to 19 points, 5 assists, and 4 rebounds in his second year.
Prior to his third season, the condition that would end his career reared its head. During preseason, he had a surgery that "removed a piece of cartilage that was causing irritation" in his left knee. Luckily, he was ready to go when the regular season started. He had the best season of his short career, putting up 22 points, 5 assists, 4 boards, and a steal per game on 57% TS with a 24.0 PER. At this point, Roy was probably a consensus #3 SG in the league behind Kobe and Wade.
He made it through most of his fourth season unscathed, putting up very similar numbers to the previous year. But with just days left in the regular season, he injured his right knee. He had surgery after MRIs revealed a bone bruise and a "slight meniscus tear". It was a short-term recovery, and he was back midway through the first round of the playoffs, but he simply did not look like himself. The Blazers were eliminated in six games.
He started his fifth season, 2010-11, looking like himself again, but by December his knees had started bugging him again and he was put on the IR. In January, he had arthroscopic surgery on both knees due to a lack of cartilage. He returned to the court in late February as a reserve off the bench, but he was inconsistent and looked little like himself. He had one last moment of glory as he led the team to their only two wins of their first round playoff series against the Mavs(en route to their championship), scoring 16 and 24 points respectively. The latter was particularly memorable as he scored 18 points in the 4th quarter including two clutch shots to clinch the victory.
By the time the 2011 lockout resolved, Roy decided that the lack of cartilage in his knees meant he couldn't play anymore and retired.
He attempted a comeback with the Minnesota Timberwolves in the 2012-13 season, but after sustaining an injury to his right knee in preseason, he only made it five games into the regular season before he needed surgery again. And that was the end of his career.
Roy could've been one of the great shooting guards, but instead, he is a footnote.
8. Yao Ming
When he was taken #1 overall by the Houston Rockets in 2002, Yao Ming instantly had one of the biggest fanbases in the league's history thanks to his home country of China. He was an ambassador for basketball in China, and you can bet the NBA loved the business potential he represented.
But aside from all that, he was also a great basketball player. As in, when he was healthy, he was clearly the second best center in the NBA after Shaq. And, at 7'6', he was also one of the few guys who could make Shaq look small.
Yao was actually something of an iron man for his first three years - 2002-05 - only missing a combined 2 games. For the latter two of those years, he was putting up 17-18ppg, 8-9rpg, and 2bpg.
But if he was an iron man his first three years, he had trouble staying on the court his second three years - 2005-08. In 2005-06, he missed 21 games after undergoing surgery for osteomyelitis in the big toe of his left foot, and then late in the season, he broke his left foot, which required a surgery with a six month recovery period.
Yao didn't mean make it to Christmas in 2006-07 before he broke his right knee. He made it back at the end of the season for the playoffs.
He made it halfway through 2007-08 before sustaining a stress fracture which kept him out for the remainder of the season. This was a particular bummer because Yao had been putting up near-career best numbers of 22 points, 10 rebounds, and 2 blocks per game, and the team was in the midst of what would end up being a 22-game winning streak.
In 2008-09, after three injury-riddled seasons, Yao finally managed to stay healthy, playing in 77 games. In the playoffs, Yao led the Rockets to a first round victory for the first time in his career, defeating the Portland Trail Blazers in 6 games as the sole man(because Tracy McGrady was injured). They were in the midst of a competitive second round series with the Lakers - who would go on to win the title - when Yao hurt his foot. After game 3, it was initially thought to be a sprained ankle, but was soon revealed to be a fracture in his left foot.
That was essentially the end of his career. He missed the remainder of the playoffs and all of 2009-10. He attempted to play again in 2010-11, but only made it five games before the same foot was fractured again. He then retired.
Yao could've been one of the greatest centers ever if he'd been able to stay healthy. That Rockets team could've done something if he and T-Mac ever could have stayed healthy at the same time.
7. Larry Johnson
The #1 pick of the 1991 draft, Larry Johnson was instantly the best player in Charlotte Hornets franchise history, though that's not saying much since the Hornets were only entering their fourth season of existence as an expansion team. Still, LJ was their first star player, and a star he was. He put up 19 points and, despite being only 6'6', 11 rebounds in his first year, good for rookie of the year honors. In his second year, he was joined by Alonzo Mourning, the #2 pick of the 1992 draft, and put up 22/10. Together, he, Mourning, and guard Muggsy Bogues led the Hornets to their first ever playoff birth. They defeated the Boston Celtics - in their first year post-Larry Bird-retirement - in four games, the last of which was decided by Mourning's famous buzzer-beater. They fell to the New York Knicks, the East's #1 seed, in five games in the second round.
At this point, it seemed like the Hornets had a bright future with that squad, and it seemed like LJ would be a star for the long haul. His play and his skillset in contrast to his size drew comparisons to Charles Barkley, and today, he is often cited as a comparison for Zion. He had a shoe deal with converse and starred in the legendary "Grandmama" ad campaign. Alas, things can change quickly, as they did for LJ that summer. I'll quote an article whose source is LJ himself:
Johnson is a mechanic now, tinkering in this garage, trying to get it to happen again. He must make his body stronger and more limber and livelier and just about everything else short of bulletproof. That is, just about the way it was (and then some, maybe) before that charity game in Washington, D.C., in July 1993, when he rose for an easy, three-quarter-speed jam and felt a hot pain shoot from his lower back through his right leg.
About a week later, while Johnson was backpedaling at his basketball camp for children in Dallas, his right leg collapsed, and he went to the ground. Even before he was up, he recalls, his first thought was, "Man, let's go get on a plane to Charlotte." He knew he needed a doctor.
Johnson had a herniated disk in his lower back. For the first time his mighty body had failed him.
But last season, racked by two damaged disks that caused back and leg woes, Johnson missed 31 games (the Hornets went 9-22 without him) and was but a shell of himself in most of the other 51. His scoring average dropped from 22.1 in 1992-93 to 16.4, and his rebounding average fell from 10.5 to 8.8. He turned sullen toward teammates and fans and, what's worse, soft; he confesses now that he "ran away from the ball."
Midway through that 1993-94 season, LJ injured his back further:
On Dec. 27 Johnson had a triple-double, with 29 points, 20 rebounds and 11 assists, against the Detroit Pistons. Glenn Perry, the Hornets' physician, remembers how reassured he felt. "That night, I'm just breathing a sigh of relief," Perry says, "and Larry walks up behind me. He puts his arm around me and says, 'Doc, I hurt my back again.' "
This time Johnson had torn a ligament that runs along his spine and suffered a ruptured disk. He missed the Hornets' game the next night, ending at 184 what was then the third-longest active NBA streak of consecutive starts. He would not play again until March 11; the Hornets, who in the preseason had been widely considered title contenders, eventually would miss the playoffs by two games.
Link to that full article: https://www.si.com/vault/1994/10/10/132207/back-to-basics-larry-johnson-is-trying-to-restore-his-damaged-body-and-tainted-image-to-nba-all-star-form
He was never the same after that. He played two more seasons in Charlotte, putting up decent numbers but lacking the explosiveness he'd had before. In the summer of 1996, he was traded to the Knicks in exchange for Anthony Mason. He'd spend five years in New York, re-inventing himself as an important role player in that team's Jeff Van Gundy era, peaking in the 1999 playoffs with a famous 4-point play and a trip to the Finals.
After struggling with his back issues for so long, his career ended when he sat out the last six games of the 2000-01 regular season and playoffs due to back pain. That fall, he retired.
Who knows what his career could've been.
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1992-93 Dunk Reel:
Grandmama commercials:
6. Ralph Sampson
Sampson was one of the greatest college players of all time at the University of Virginia. Despite never winning an NCAA championship, he did lead his team to an NIT title, NCAA Final Four, NCAA Elite Eight, and win three Naismith awards. He was heavily recruited for years.
An anecdote I just read about struck me as equal parts funny and thought-provoking. Sampson was drafted in 1983, but he had considered leaving Virginia for the NBA after his junior year in 1982. The problem was that the Lakers(via a Cleveland 1st they had acquired) and Clippers were tied for the worst record in the league, and because there was no lottery yet, a coin flip would determine who picked #1 and #2, with Sampson being a shoe-in to go #1. The deadline for Sampson to make his decision came before the coin flip. So, to quote Wikipedia, "Rather than risk playing for the Clippers (who ended up losing the toss), Sampson stayed in school.".
I found this funny because it means the Clippers were such a joke in those days that he preferred to play another year in college for free than get paid to pay for the Clippers.
I found it thought-provoking, because what if Sampson had come out in 82? The Lakers won the flip. This is the year they took James Worthy #1. If Sampson had come out, would the Lakers have taken him instead? And wouldn't that, knowing what we know about how Sampson's career went, mean that the Lakers' title chances would be decreased going forward? I can see them still winning in 85 because Sampson was healthy, but by 87 and 88, the latter of which Sampson was out for altogether? That could've made Magic's legacy look different too. Interesting to think about.
Anyway, back to Sampson. Sampson, a 7'4' giant with high-level shooting and ball-handling skills for a guy his size, was simply great in his first three years, 1983-84, 1984-85, and 1985-86. He played in all but three games over those three seasons, averaging 21/11, 22/10, and 18/11 respectively, and my guess is that his numbers would've been even higher in the latter two years if he hadn't been playing next to Hakeem, who the Rockets had drafted #1 overall in 1984.
Fast forward to late in his third season - March 24, 1986. On this day, the Rockets played the Celtics - the 1986 Celtics - at the Boston Garden in their last meeting of the regular season. Sampson took a hard fall in this game while jumping for a rebound. He went down hard, hit his head, and was carried off the court on a stretcher. There was fear he'd broken his back. That ended up not being the case, and he only missed three games, but when he came back, it was with a limp. There is speculation that overcompensation for the pain in his hips and back is at least partially what led to the subsequent knee injuries. But first...
The Rockets hadn't qualified for the playoffs in 84, and were eliminated in the first round in 85. In 1986, they had won 51 games and were a more formidable team. They defeated the Kings and Nuggets in the first two rounds of the playoffs, losing only two games along the way.
In the WCF, they met the heavily-favored defending champion Showtime Lakers, led by the likes of Magic, Kareem, Worthy, and Pat Riley. They stunned the world by defeating them in five games, the last of which ended on a Ralph Sampson buzzer beater that will be replayed forever.
In the Finals, they met the 1986 Celtics. Nobody was beating the 1986 Celtics. The Rockets fell in six games, but everybody thought they'd be back, that they were potentially a dynasty.
Things changed midway through the following season. On February 3, 1987, in a game against the Nuggets, Sampson slipped on the court, resulting in torn cartilage in his left knee.
"He was treated in the locker room and returned wearing a knee brace. There was speculation he slipped on a solvent used to clean the court of scuff marks left by a drill team that had practiced its halftime show before the game."
He had arthroscopic surgery to repair it. Initially he was thought to be out for the season, but he ended up coming back after just eight weeks to play the last couple weeks of the regular season and the playoffs. In hindsight, Sampson has said that he should've sat out the rest of the year and allowed himself to heal fully, but he thought the team had a chance to go back to the finals and he badly wanted to help and be a part of that. Unfortunately, they fell to the Seattle Supersonics in the second round in six games. In 10 playoff games, Sampson averaged 18.6ppg, 8.8rpg, and 1.2bpg.
Early in the 1987-88 season, the Rockets signed him to a new five-year deal, but soon after, in December, they traded him to the Run TMC-era Golden State Warriors. I guess they saw the writing on the wall, but I feel like it's strange that they gave him a contract right when they were ready to trade him.
Sampson put up 15.6ppg, 9.6rpg, and 1.8bpg through 48 games that season, until March, when he injured his right knee. He had arthroscopic surgery to repair it, and this time missed the remainder of the season.
In late December, nearly two months into the 1988-89 season, he underwent yet another surgery on his left knee. He came back after only a month, but he was already a shadow of himself.
He played as a reserve for the Kings the following two seasons and for the Bullets for a season after that. By 1992, his career was over.
Highlights:
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HOF Retrospective:
5. Maurice Stokes
I struggled with where to place Stokes on this list. One, because he's a guy from the 50s, and I really have no way of knowing how good he was or would've been other than his stats and what's said by people who are old enough to have an idea. Two, because his injury is unique from everyone else on this list. His wasn't a knee injury or a foot injury or a back injury, but rather a brain injury - paralysis caused by brain damage resulting, probably, from an untreated concussion.
Stokes was a 6'7' PF/C for the Rochester(his first two years) and then Cincinnati(his third year) Royals - the present day Sacramento Kings. In his three seasons, from 1955-58, he averaged 16/16, 15/17, and 16/18, respectively. His best teammates were Clyde Lovellette and Jack Twyman, the latter of whom would later care for him and earn a reputation as the greatest teammate in NBA history.
In the last game of the 1957-58 regular season, Stokes took a hard fall that resulted in his head hitting the ground and him being knocked unconscious. To quote his Wikipedia page, he was "revived with smelling salts and returned to the game". In today's game, after an incident like that, the player would not simply return to the game - in all likelihood, they'd probably be out a week or more until they cleared the concussion protocol. But no such thing existed back then, so he simply finished the game and moved on.
He put up 12/15 in the first game of the playoffs in Detroit. It was his last game. On the team flight back to Cincinnati, he became ill. Long story short, the fall he'd taken caused what's called "post-traumatic encephalopathy", a "brain injury that damaged his motor-control center", and he was left permanently paralyzed for the reminder of his life. Mentally, he was alert and aware, but able to communicate only by blinking his eyes.
His teammate, Jack Twyman, as mentioned, cared for him for the rest of his life - that's why the NBA's "Teammate of the Year Award" is named after him and Stokes.
Stokes lived for 12 more years before passing away in 1970 at the age of 36.
Aside from Stokes' individual talents, the great what-if in this case is that the Royals would still have gotten Oscar Robertson several years later due to territorial draft picks, and a Robertson/Stokes duo could've been legit in the 60s.
Look, if I was ranking this list purely on how tragic each case is, this would be #1, easily. But that's not the only criteria. I simply am not convinced that a prime Stokes is a greater loss than the four players above him. If there's anyone here old enough to have watched Stokes play, or more knowledgable about him, who wishes to convince me I'm wrong, go ahead and speak up. I'm open to changing my mind on this one.
Tribute someone made:
Jack Twyman making Stokes' HOF acceptance speech on his behalf:
4. Derrick Rose
As a lifelong Bulls fan, this one is a little more personal for me.
The Bulls had had some success with the Scott Skiles-led Luol Deng/Ben Gordon/Kirk Hinrich core, but that whole thing imploded in the 2007-08 season. The Bulls went into the lottery with the 9th worst record, 1.7% odds for the #1 pick, and miraculously won. They selected the hometown kid, Derrick Rose.
Rose looked like the real thing right away, and the team spent the next two years rebuilding around him.
By the time 2010-11, his third season started, the Bulls had a core of Rose, Joakim Noah. Carlos Boozer, and Luol Deng, led by head coach Tom Thibodeau. They surprised the league and won a league best 62 games, and Rose became the youngest MVP in league history, averaging 25ppg, 7apg, 4rpg, and 1spg. Rose led the team to the ECF, where they fell to the "Big 3" Heat - in their first year - in five games.
Prior to the lockout-shortened 2011-12 season, the Bulls brought in Rip Hamilton to fill their hole at SG(Keith Bogans had been the starter in 2010-11) and the team was ready to make another run.
That whole lockout season was injury riddled for pretty much everyone on the team. I won't get into detail about everyone, but suffice it to say, the entire starting lineup barely played together all year. Specifically about Derrick though.
It started in a game in Minnesota on January 10, 2012. Rose tripped over the Wolves' Anthony Peeler diving for a loose ball, jamming his toe in the process. Rose apparently had been dealing with turf toe, and this incident caused a flare-up. He toughed out the next two games, but then missed four.
In February, he dealt with back spasms. It started with two games in New Jersey and New Orleans where he played but looked like he could barely move, and continued with five missed games after that.
In March, during a nationally televised Sunday afternoon game vs the Knicks, Rose played very well, but pulled his groin in the process. He was out into early April, missing 12 games.
A short time later, he sustained a right foot injury that kept him out for four more games.
He came back for the third-to-last and second-to-last games of the regular season, and was sat out for the final game of the regular season to preserve him. At long last, Rose and our entire starting 5 were healthy at the same time and ready for the playoffs.
This is all prelude. This is all to paint a picture of a guy who couldn't stay healthy all year, who had a series of injuries destabilize him all year. All of the injuries - turf toe, lower back spasms, groin, right foot - were all lower body injuries, and at least some of these injuries were likely caused from compensation for prior injuries. Given all of these injuries, and given his playing style, he was probably much more susceptible to a catastrophic injury at this time.
So we reach game 1 of the first round series vs the Sixers. The Bulls controlled that game all the way. I will never forget that game. We looked so good. Watching that game, I was convinced we had a real shot at taking down the Heat. We were in control enough to have a double digit lead with less than two minutes left. Rose was on the bench. And for some reason - we'll never know why - Tom Thibodeau put Rose back in the game.
Up 12, with 1:20 left, Rose had the ball, and drove into the paint. Rose had a habit of jumping forward into a plant, and then jumping again for a shot or pass. He was known for it. So on this drive, he jumped forward, and on landing for his plant, his knee gave and he tore his ACL. I knew something was wrong before the announcers even did, because after that plant Rose jumped to pass the ball to Carlos Boozer, and the pass just looked out of control, like he was desperate to get the ball out his hands. He went to the floor, the announcers noticed, and the rest is history.
He missed the entire 2012-13 season. He was medically cleared to play late in the season, but chose not to return, even in the playoffs. This is a contentious subject within the Bulls fanbase to this day, with some still blaming Derrick for not playing when he was cleared, and others more sympathetic to a player not wanting to play if he doesn't feel right. Anyway, he missed the whole season and returned for the following preseason in the fall of 2013.
He played the preseason, and ten out of the first eleven games of the regular season, and he looked pretty decent. Not like MVP Rose, but pretty decent.
But in the last game in Portland, disaster struck again. He'd been having a decent game, but with about 3 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, he and Noah ran a two-man game. They started both out at the three point line, then Rose cut towards the basket. Noah passed the ball into him, but the pass was intercepted by the Blazers' Nicolas Batum. As Batum took the ball away, Rose slipped twice and came up limping. He was taken out of the game shortly thereafter and didn't return. After the game, everyone was abuzz that something serious had happened again. There were reports that the Bulls feared another torn ACL in the other knee. Well, it wasn't an ACL, but it was a torn meniscus. Faced either repairing it(longer recovery) or having it removed(shorter recovery), he chose to have it repaired, and therefore missed the remaining 71 games of that season as well.
I know a lot of people think of the ACL tear as the moment his career irrevocably changed, but for me, as a Bulls fan, this felt even worse. Maybe you can come back from one season-ending knee surgery and work your way back to being elite, but two, in both knees, in back-to-back seasons? For a guy who was as dependent on his athleticism as Rose was? It felt worse the second time. Like, you just knew it was over.
He came back for 2014-15 and played, again, pretty decently, but not like his MVP self. Honestly, at this point, he probably already looked closer to the player he is today than the player he was in 2010-12. He managed to stay more or less healthy until late February, when he tore his meniscus again, in the same knee he tore it in 2013, in a game against Milwaukee. Apparently this was a subtle enough injury that he didn't even know it happened in game, but reported pain in his knee the next day, and then had an MRI. This time, he opted to have the meniscus removed, and due to the shorter recovery time, he was back for the playoffs. The Bulls defeated the Bucks in the first round in six games, before falling to the Cavs - in LBJ's first year back - in six games in the second round. Rose hit a buzzer-beating game-winning three to win the third game of that series, in what ended up being perhaps his last really memorable moment as a Bull.
He played 66 games for the Bulls in 2015-16 before being traded to the Knicks. After a tumultuous year there, he signed with the Cavs for 2017-18. He dealt with a sprained ankle and bone spurs and considered retirement. He came back in January looking like a shadow of himself. He was traded to Utah and immediately waived. He signed with Minnesota and finished the season there, showing some signs, particularly in the playoffs with his former teammate Jimmy Butler.
He re-signed with Minnesota for 2018-19, and had a renaissance; he didn't become his MVP self again - that's gone forever - but he worked himself back into being a productive, positive value player, averaging 18ppg and 4apg in 51 games.
He signed with Detroit this season, where he's putting up similar numbers.
These last two seasons have been a feel-good story for him, and it makes me happy to see him doing well, but he's still not close to what he was pre-injury. He was on track to be an all-time great, and now he's one of the biggest injury-related what-ifs of all time.
Highlights:
More Highlights:
3. Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway
If you weren't alive or old enough to be aware of it at the time, I'm not sure you can appreciate how big of a star Penny Hardaway was becoming in his early years playing with Shaq in Orlando. He, along with, Shaq, had led the Magic to the franchise's first ever Finals appearance in only his second year(1994-95) and they were championship contenders again the following year(1995-96), and as a result, he was in high demand for endorsements. He did commercials for Sprite, and he had his own shoe line with Nike, promoted with the famous 'Lil' Penny' ad campaign(voiced by a young Chris Rock) that anyone who was around then still remembers today. With a finals appearance and these endorsements under his belt, he was a bonafide superstar by 1995-96.
But things started going wrong towards the end of that third year. Penny recalls initially injuring his knee in game 1 of the first round of the playoffs vs the Detroit Pistons:
It was in [1996]. Joe Dumars, I’ll never forget it. I was going up for a rebound and he slammed his knee right into the back of my knee. I don’t even know if he knew that he hurt me and from that point on, my knee never felt the same. It just hit me right in the back of the bone. As I extended, he was going for the rebound and he slammed it right into the back of my knee. I’ll never forget the pain. I finished the series and we went on to the [Eastern Conference Finals], but it never felt the same. It ended up being a torn meniscus, but it just never felt the same.
Even though he felt hurt, Penny played out the playoffs until the Magic were eliminated in the ECF by the eventual champion 72-10 Chicago Bulls, and also played in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. It wasn't until training camp prior to the 1996-97 that it was revealed that it was a tear. He played the first four games of the season before undergoing arthroscopic surgery. He missed a month and a half of action(minus one attempt to play in mid-December) before coming back. But he already didn't look like the same guy.
Shaq had left in FA for the Lakers over the summer, so Penny was coming back as the sole star. Penny had averaged around 20ppg the previous two seasons, but that was next to Shaq. However, when Shaq missed the first 28 games of the 1995-96 season due to injury, Penny averaged 26ppg in that time, and 27ppg in the month of November alone. So he'd already shown that with Shaq gone, he could up his scoring numbers.
Yet in the 59 games he played in 1996-97 when he came back from the surgery, as the sole star, he averaged just 20.5ppg. He just wasn't himself. He did manage to finish strong, averaging 31ppg in a five-game series loss to the Alonzo Mourning-led Miami Heat in the first round of the playoffs.
The following season, in December 1997, he underwent another surgery, similar to the first one, and was out until the end of January. He came back ten days before the all-star game. At this point, Penny was starting to get some bad buzz. He was perceived as being the leader of a movement to drive former coach Brian Hill out of town. In addition to this, some players - namely Tim Hardaway - suggested that Penny coming off the injured list just ten days before the ASG was "convenient", accusing him of coming back early so no one would take that spotlight. Between character issues and injury issues, the Magic weren't sold on him anymore, so around this time - the trade deadline was near - Penny was nearly dealt to the then-New Jersey Nets, but the deal fell through. Penny played the ASG, but less than a week later, after a series of poor performances, he decided he still wasn't physically right, and ruled himself out for the season. He had averaged just 16.4ppg in only 19 games in the 1997-98 season.
He played in all 50 games of the lockout-shortened 1999 season, averaging 15.8ppg. In the offseason, the Magic finally did part ways with him, trading him to the Phoenix Suns for a thoroughly underwhelming package including just-about-done Danny Manning, Pat Garrity, and two future firsts.
Penny played in 60 games in 1999-00, his first season in Phoenix, averaging 16.9ppg, and as a tandem, he and young, blonde-era Jason Kidd led the team to the playoffs. The 2000 playoffs would be a sort of last hurrah for Penny as a star player. He was already far from what he was in 1994-96, but he'd fall further starting the next season. The Suns defeated the defending champion Spurs - who were missing Tim Duncan do to a lateral meniscus tear - in 4 games in the first round, before falling to the Kobe/Shaq Lakers - en route to their first title - in 5 games in the second round. In those 9 games, Penny averaged 20.3ppg, 5.7apg, 4.9rpg, and 1.6spg. It was the last time he ever looked like anything resembling the Penny Hardaway of old.
Penny had two microfracture surgeries in 2000-01, coming back for four games in January before complaining that the knee still hurt, and missing the remainder of the season.
That was all she wrote. He never averaged more than 12ppg again after that. He spent another two and a half years with the Suns before being traded to the Knicks in the Marbury deal. He spent two years in New York before being traded back to Orlando in a salary dump. He was waived immediately. He sat out the 2006-07 season in semi-retirement, before attempting one last comeback with the Heat on a vet min contract in August of 2007. He was waived before Christmas, and that was the end of his career.
A sad end for a career that had started so brightly. Penny should've been in the same sentence with Kobe, T-Mac, and Iverson in the early 00s, one the league's premier stars. Instead, he was never more than a role player after 2001.
Pre-injury highlights:
More:
Top 40 Plays w/Magic:
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