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Originally Posted by trackercowe
The NBA has a huge problem with the sheer amount of injuries and players out of the line up right now. I'm surprised the media isn't running with the story. It feels like 1/3 of all starters are MIA right now. New Orleans was missing its entire starting five the other night. With all these players needing rest (or personal) days, it's no wonder the league viewership is down 28% this year. Why would anyone want to fork over thousands for floor seats to watch Embid, Maxey, and George sit on the bench?
https://www.outkick.com/sports/nba-r...d-down-28-espn
Here's the thing I don't understand, is why all these star players need night's off. Go back a decade or even a few years and star players rarely missed games. Even LeBron has played every game this year. In my fantasy league half of my roster is out of action right now. It's beyond ridiculous, they were talking about "game management" becoming a thing in the NHL one day, Bettman probably should get in front of that now. The players run the NBA, don't let that happen in the NHL. Look at the Clippers and Sixers now, and the Nets a few years ago. They were all broken because of discontent and game management from their stars. |
I buy into the theory that the defensive schemes teams are running these days put way more strain on athletes than traditional defenses, because offenses have become increasingly movement oriented, and on defense players are doing way more high-intensity lateral movement with a lot of sudden stops and starts. This change didn't happen overnight or just in the last couple years, but it's been a growing trend going back to at least 2018 or so, and players who have been in the league for several years have racked up a lot of miles on that. The distance run in an NBA game is way up over the last decade, something like 1.5 miles per team per game. I've looked into tracking data on player speed and distance a lot lately (because there are some interesting trends for the Raptors there), and while overall player speed isn't up dramatically overall or on offense, it's way up on defense over that time frame.
This isn't everything, there's also some players feeling that they have more right to dictate their own recovery schedules, plus teams being more cautious than ever with their star player minutes. More parity means that more teams are thinking that it's more important that they finish the end of the regular season as healthy as possible, than finishing as high in the standings as possible. There's also been some sports medicine professionals who are heavily critical of the AAU circuit in the US, saying it's resulting in guys coming into the league barely held together. They play too many competitive games over the previous decade when their bodies are still developing, and the style of play is about being as explosive as possible because that's what gets you noticed, physical training is about maximizing those muscles that make you explosive, not the ones that keep your body stable.