NBA Injury Report Through 60 Games and Examining This Season’s Place In History
- Post By: Jeff Stotts
- Date:
- Category: Injury Report, NBA
Through 60 games, the Phoenix Suns medical staff remains the top-ranked team in the NBA. The Suns have lost just four games to injury since the midpoint of the season, bringing their total up to 20 games missed. For comparison sake, 46 NBA players have missed more games this season than the entire Phoenix roster. Additionally the Suns have lost just $1.2 million in salary to injury, a sum lower than 21 other teams spent over the last 19 games. The recent ankle injuries to Alex Len and Brandon Knight will make repeating this impressive quarter difficult but Phoenix has proven they remain the elite training staff in the NBA.
Other teams joining the Suns with impressive third quarters include the Raptors (6 games lost), Warriors (6), and Spurs (8). The Bucks endured the roughest stretch from games 41 to 60 losing 75 games to injury. Season-ending injuries to Damien Inglis, Jabari Parker, and since-waived Kendall Marshall were the primary reason for the lofty total. Season-ending injuries were also a problem for the Lakers who now have four players done for the year in Kobe Bryant, Steve Nash, Ronnie Price, and Julius Randle. These injuries have pushed the Lakers past the Sixers for the highest total games lost this season with 212 games lost.
While the frequency of injuries appears to be on the rise, the injury rates as a whole suggest otherwise. I recently spoke with Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck about the perceived problems and together we examined where this year ranks when compared to previous seasons.
From Beck:Through the 60-game mark, NBA teams had lost 3,165 player-games to injury, putting the league on pace for 4,326 games lost this season. That’s below the 10-year average of 4,577 and well short of last season’s mark of 4,989 games lost.
This likely will not be the worst season for games missed by stars, either. That distinction belongs to 2012-13, when the following players all missed 29 games or more: Rose, Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol, Grant Hill, Rajon Rondo, Amar’e Stoudemire, Chauncey Billups, Kevin Love, Brandon Roy and Andrew Bynum.
All told, star players (defined by making at least two All-Star teams) missed 940 games in 2012-13, an average of 16.49 games per star, according to Stotts. This season, the total stands at 556 games, an average of 12.36 games per star. Those figures include the remaining games that will be missed by Bryant, Bosh and Anthony, who are out for the season. Some of the other top names are expected back within the next few weeks: Griffin and Howard for sure, with Rose and George likely to follow. For purposes of this study, Stotts did not include estimates for those four players over the final two months.
As I told Bleacher Report it’s difficult to predict what will happen over the final 20 games of the season. There are currently 19 players definitively ruled out for the season, guaranteeing the total grows by 418 games and at least $35 million. What we don’t know is what other injuries will occur down the stretch, a truth we were reminded of last night when both Charlotte’s Al Jefferson and Memphis’ Mike Conley went down. As a result NBA teams and fans around the league will simply have to anxiously wait for the conclusion of the regular season to see precisely where this seemingly injury-ravaged season finishes within historical context.
