Players Are Not Ready for the NBA's Regular Season Pace

Let's talk about the injury issues that the NBA is dealing with right now, because like the NBA will say it's been worse or it's not as, you know. It's not as five-alarm fire as it seems, but it sure does seem like it's bad right now in the NBA. We have had a rash of significant injuries, some season-ending injuries, some injuries that are keeping guys out for months. Oklahoma City has been decimated. Jalen Williams, Kason Wallace, Chet Holmgren, all out for two months or longer. In the case of Williams and Kason Wallace, potentially out for the rest of the season. We've got Paolo Banchero in Orlando. He's out for another month. Kawhi Leonard. I can say it's nothing, but Kawhi Leonard and the knee injury is never nothing. Yeah. I'm just going down the list that I have here. No, Kawhi's supposed to be out for a month. Yeah, Brandon Ingram is still out. Jalen Suggs, bone bruise, Anthony Edwards, injured. Tyrese Halliburton, injured. Jaren Jackson Jr., injured. Ja Morant, injured. Lot of injuries, which has opened up the discussion again about... Whether or not there is a need for a structural change in the NBA, you've had the usual commentary out there, whether it's people saying, hey, let's reduce the number of games of the season again, or how about we reduce games to a 40 minute game among others. So do you think this run of injuries should force the NBA to think about making structural remedies to potentially or try to avoid stuff like this again. I think one of the best qualities of this league office, and I cover several different sports, is that they are flexible and willing to change. There are sports leagues in this country, I will not name them, who literally you would have to shake the building down to get them to change things. And the NBA has been incredibly responsive over the years at fixing things in the game that are starting to go the wrong way. And I hope that they take a closer look at this There are several specific issues that we can talk about. The pace of the game, the bigger size bodies that have been knocking into each other than ever before in the history of the league, and also the number of trips up the floor because of the pace of the game. Teams now are taking an estimated 700 more trips up and back on the floor than they did previously, so even 10 years ago. So it is just one of those things where some of the components of the game. Need to be mitigated. And Adam is right, by the way, when he says some of this isn't a number of games thing. Because look at all these injuries. And these guys have played, what, five, ten? I mean, I don't know where everyone is in their schedule, but what are we at? Twelve games into the season? Something like that for a lot of these teams? This is not an exhaustion thing. Not even twelve games in the season. It's amazing. Yeah. Some are a lot less, yeah. I mean. Great. . So, I just feel like... . All right. . Thank you. . He's right in terms of, hey, Thank you. . Thank you. . shortening the schedule doesn't fix everything. Thank you. . Thank you. . Thank you. . It might not fix everything, but it might fix something. Thank you. . All right. . So, I just feel like... . So I think if it's not shortening the schedule, . . it's shortening games, those kinds of things. . . But I also think there needs to be a deeper look . . . into some of the physicality. . . Of this game, and by physicality, . . I don't just mean guys going at each other. . . I mean what it takes to succeed in the NBA today. It just takes being bigger and stronger and what these guys are doing on the court when they face each other in terms of knocking each other around, in terms of just sort of what the modern NBA requires of them, because that's really the heart to me of what some of these issues are. And also, the other thing you have to look at as a contributing factor is caution. And the caution comes in, you mentioned Tyrese Haliburton. He has a hamstring strain. You better believe with what happened to Tyrese Haliburton a year and change ago, that that staff, that medical staff is going to wrap him in cotton balls every time his hamstring has even a little bit of a tweak. And he's going to stay out, not just the amount of time you might regularly, but even more so. Because they want to be careful and they want him there at the end of the season. And I think that approach, while good for the players, and I'm not suggesting that medical staffs curb that approach, but that is part of it. And so you have to look at what is causing. The primary injuries that is causing teams to be so careful about secondary injuries. And one of the things that I was looking at was, I'm trying to give credit here. I'll think of it in a minute. It was on The Ringer. So. Somebody who looked at, oh, Kirk Goldsberry, looked at sort of some of the factors here. And one thing he heard from Ron Adams, of course, the longtime coach in Golden State, was that it used to be a two-footed game. The NBA used to be a two-footed game. And now you have so many guys shooting step backs and one-footers and all those kinds of things that that puts more strain on their lower bodies. That is why are we seeing an increase in ACLs, MCLs, Achilles, that kind of thing. And that's something to look at. I just think they need to dig down, make this a primary issue in terms of the league office, their priorities this year. And figure out how to do the thing that they've done so successfully over the years is tweak and change. I don't think there's anything they can tweak. I don't think there's anything they can change, at least when it comes to this season, for a couple of reasons. First of all, reducing the number of games, as you know, complete non-starter because who's giving money back? Nobody's willing to make the kind of financial sacrifice you need to make to whittle the game down from 82 to 72 games. It's not going to happen. The idea of reducing the minutes per game is interesting in theory, but I talked to a couple of coaches about this over the course of the week, and one thing they said to me was like, okay, you reduce it to 40 minutes per game, we're just going to play our stars more. It's not going to reduce the number of minutes that Luka Doncic is going to play, it's going to reduce the number of minutes that Matisse Thybuly plays, or Zaire Williams plays. Like you're going to see bench players. Get a lot less minutes. It's not going to change one bit how many minutes the star players are playing. And that's what you're kind of after there. On top of that, if you're going to a 40-minute game, you're also cutting away a timeout. And timeouts mean money. Television networks love that timeout. That is money. That is sales. So to me, this is nothing they can do on a season level. What they can do and what they should do is target the preseason. Um, training camp should be a lot longer training camps, kind of officially open in late September, mostly early October. They're really in stride. And then the season starts like October 22nd this year, October 20th, somewhat in the twenties, early twenties. Yeah. Um, that's not a lot of time to ramp up. And if players are not coming into camp in like mid season form, that puts them at greater risk for injury. So if I'm the NBA. I'm saying to teams that we're going to start training camps in mid-September and I'm working this out with the union as well. It's going to be a discussion, but you got to start training camps in mid-September, increase the number of preseason games. And I would say to teams, Hey, how about you play guys in preseason games? All right. Like, you know, you know, most of the time these preseason games, like you kind of like have your fingers up and across there, be like, please don't get hurt. Please don't get hurt. Like, you know, I've talked about Mike Brown with the Knicks, like gave his players the option one game to play or not. Right. Make them play like that. I know there is the risk of injury if you play technically, but there's also a lot to be gained from sending. But Chris, you're sitting here saying that guys don't have enough ramp up time. And that's, what's a major contributing cause to these injuries. But if you make them play during the preseason, you are once again, shortening their ramp up time. So you can't have it both ways. Well, that's not, no, it's not, it's not shortening the ramp up time because. You're only playing these guys for 40 minutes. You're playing them for 15, 20. I'm going to go hard for a short period of time as they ramp up to being able to play 30, 40 minutes per game. I'm just saying not playing and only practicing is not helping them get ready for the start. So I would go to like... Six, seven preseason games. Make sure your stars play in five or six of them and get them ready for it. Because look, there are some injuries that have nothing to do with this. Like Jalen Williams, his injury has nothing to do with the issue, like came down wrong. But. Anthony Edwards, was that something to do with the ramp-up, the knee injury? Tyrese Halliburton, we talked about, could he have used a bigger ramp-up? Chet Holmgren, could he have used a little bit more time? Like these knee and hamstrings and foot issues, like those are the kind of things that I think could be addressed with a longer training camp, a longer preseason, which would give these teams more time to ramp the guys up. Otherwise, you really are crossing your fingers and hoping that everyone on your roster He's spending the offseason working hard and he's spending the offseason getting their bodies ready to hit the ground running when they get to training camp. That's not necessarily fair to players. You shouldn't ask them to be year-round athletes. But if they're not going to be in shape to start the season, then hey, they're going to need as much time as possible to get ready for opening night. First of all, I think you can ask them to be year-round athletes. The salaries in the NBA have exploded so much since 2016. And it's okay to tell players your job is to stay in excellent shape. And if you want to take a month off after the season, great. Go lie in a boat somewhere, eat all the candy. But they're being paid tremendous amounts of money. And I do think it's fair to say you got to come into camp 100% in shape. And that is on you. You can do it at your pace, on your schedule, in the off-season, but you need to do it. I do think that's a factor. I agree with you. Those pre-season changes, I think it's very smart. I think what you're proposing absolutely would have an impact. But I think they need to look further because, as I noted, teams are not that far into their schedule. So you really can't blame exhaustion. I know that the preseason ramp up isn't about exhaustion, but even that like, you know, oh, moving from 20 miles an hour to 70 miles an hour without an in-between, I just feel like there are so many numbers on the way the game has changed and what is causing sort of this wear and tear. And also, by the way, some of these more fluky injuries, obviously, Jalen, you know, he landed wrong and that's just how it is. We see things where people are, you know, like, I'm trying to think of an example. You know, look at Anthony Edwards is a great example, right? So this is a guy that scored 47. Two days before he went into surgery and then is having this problem and needs his knee scoped and cleaned up. I just think that they need to look at the totality of how these guys are playing. And I'm not suggesting they've never looked before. Oh, the NBA hasn't been paying attention to this. I'm sure they have been doing a lot of looking, but I would like to see publicly them talk about some of the changes we've seen to the game of basketball and whether They can think of ways to make guys less susceptible to injury. Look, when hand checking got tossed out of the game, the idea was to increase scoring, obviously. Obviously. Um, There are ways to manipulate the rules to make guys a little less susceptible to injury. And I do think that that has to be examined. I am not a medical doctor. What's a rule? Give me an example. Well, that's what I'm saying. I am not a medical doctor. I cannot tell you. What the correlation? Because we don't have the data. And that's one of the other things I would say is the NBA does not release all the data. And therefore, you have outside projections. Jeff Stotts, who runs a great Twitter feed, if you're not on it, I recommend it. He's the medical, you know, whatever, he will tell you how many. how many guys games have missed with that injury, what that injury means, all of those kinds of things. And his numbers are way different than some of the league numbers. And I just think that A, everyone getting on the same page with how many guys are injured, how they're injured, what the changes in the games are, looking at how those changes might affect some of these injuries, and then cross-referencing all of that as a trained medical professional, which you and I are not, To look at, huh. If guys were doing this a little less, that might help with curbing some of these injuries. And the NBA can make those changes. Yeah. Look, you're not going to slow the game down, basically. And that's the fundamental problem here. Well, I mean, slow the game down? The game used to be slower. And then they changed the rules. And then it got faster. Well, I think athletes are different today. They're bigger, faster, stronger, play above the rim. And yes, there is a connection between playing faster and success. You see teams all the time playing faster. I don't know. I mean, reintegrate hand-checking, like you took hand-checking out, bring it back in to try to slow these games down. I don't. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think you and I are, I mean, frankly qualified to come up with looking that deep into what guys are physically doing on the court that is causing some of these injuries and then addressing from a rules perspective, how to do, how we can get players to do less of those things. I just think that, A, we would need more access to data than we have right now, and we would both need a medical degree as well as a physio degree. But there are people who are extremely smart in the league office who have all those things. They have the data we don't have. They have guys who are experts, women who are experts at this kind of thing. And I would just hope. That the league is taking an even deeper look, because I know that they have looked before. It's not like they've been just, you know, la-di-da-ing this, but a deeper look at exactly what motions, what speed, all of the things that make guys more susceptible to injury and figuring out how to slight rules tweak here and there. I'm not suggesting we go back to the 90s, but slight rules tweaks here and there that might help curb some of those situations. And I just think you have to start looking at that because more games, less games, as you point out, not going to happen with the ownership. Although I say that when they're getting all this expansion money, that's the time to make those kinds of changes because then they won't feel it in their pocketbooks. But we know that everyone just wants more and more and more. But, yeah, I just I do think that that correlation needs to happen. We need to look at what is specifically happening on the court in the changes in the game. And how to maybe tweak some rules to slow down those activities. Yeah. I mean, I think the, the flip side of that is that the game could get less watchable. I think the NBA likes it this way. I think they like, it's not watchable. If most of your favorite players are injured. I agree with that. I agree with that. I, to me, I would start with the preseason though. I would start with the game. It's a great solution. I totally agree with you. Cause you know, I think you're like fundamentally, you're just, you're also not like go back. I actually think Adam Silver, what I've heard, like he likes the idea of 40 minute games. Um, Adams. I'm a globalist when it comes to basketball, but I just don't see financially how it's feasible. And I also think, like I said, it's not going to affect the minutes of stars. You're just going to see bench guys get more and more marginalized to the point where teams can be like, we don't need a 15-man rotation. Right. We just need 10 guys. We'll keep a bunch of roster spots open or whatever. I don't think that's reasonable. Again, quitting a reduced number of games is not reasonable either. We'll see. But I think something... I think something has to be done. Like, this is bad. And, you know, I think you'd rather be proactive than reactive. You get all these problems that are happening right now. It definitely hurts the game. Because when you, people are paying tickets to watch Stars. It's the most star-driven league of the four major sports. And not seeing Stars is a big problem for the NBA.