So the piece you and everyone else seems to miss on injuries in sports these days is simply their bodies. Players are fitter, and I would bet heavier (definitely true in several sports, not so sure about the NBA), and are taking much more drastic accelerations and decelerations more regularly.
It just wears on your body more.
Add on top of that when you build muscle generally ligaments and tendons don't build proportionally to the muscle, and you are just going to end up with more soft tissue injuries. I don't think the schedule has almost anything to do with it other than the basic linearity of each x minutes of basketball you are putting on Y stress.
Especially if you are really pushing. When guys really are desperate, really give actual 100% effort (which even in pro sports doesn't happen a lot), you end up overstressing things.
Shaving 10 extra regular season games wouldn't I bet have almost any noticeable impact on injuries. 7/8s are many guys would be injured going into the playoffs, and exactly as many players would be injured IN the playoffs. Honestly if the players ere more rested their might even be *more* injuries as they pushed harder.
When you are fatigued you are a lot more likely to make mistakes, but you are also less likely to over push yourself. Anyway, NBA discussion around injuries still mostly strikes me as in the medieval bloodletting phase of understanding what is going on with bodies. So much old wives tales treated like wisdom.
Also Garnett was a better D player than Duncan, but Duncan was more consistent, a better leader, and had better teammates. Not knocking Duncan at all, also great, but KG better defender.
Ethan as a subscriber can you take my subscription dollars and get better internet? 😀
Can you guys go get drunk together kill a hooker and hide the body? Need to juice up the chemistry. Tough when nobody takes the wheel.
Ethan, can you turn this into a podcast episode?
So the piece you and everyone else seems to miss on injuries in sports these days is simply their bodies. Players are fitter, and I would bet heavier (definitely true in several sports, not so sure about the NBA), and are taking much more drastic accelerations and decelerations more regularly.
It just wears on your body more.
Add on top of that when you build muscle generally ligaments and tendons don't build proportionally to the muscle, and you are just going to end up with more soft tissue injuries. I don't think the schedule has almost anything to do with it other than the basic linearity of each x minutes of basketball you are putting on Y stress.
Especially if you are really pushing. When guys really are desperate, really give actual 100% effort (which even in pro sports doesn't happen a lot), you end up overstressing things.
Shaving 10 extra regular season games wouldn't I bet have almost any noticeable impact on injuries. 7/8s are many guys would be injured going into the playoffs, and exactly as many players would be injured IN the playoffs. Honestly if the players ere more rested their might even be *more* injuries as they pushed harder.
When you are fatigued you are a lot more likely to make mistakes, but you are also less likely to over push yourself. Anyway, NBA discussion around injuries still mostly strikes me as in the medieval bloodletting phase of understanding what is going on with bodies. So much old wives tales treated like wisdom.
Also Garnett was a better D player than Duncan, but Duncan was more consistent, a better leader, and had better teammates. Not knocking Duncan at all, also great, but KG better defender.