NBA injury crisis turns play-offs to survival of the fittest

Source : ABC NEWS

The NBA’s final four is set as the race for this year’s title is narrowed down to the Knicks, Thunder, Pacers and Timberwolves, the four teams to avoid the injury bug during the play-offs.

Here is what we learned from the first two rounds of this year’s play-offs ahead of the conference finals.

The play-offs are the survival of the fittest

Through the first two rounds of the play-offs, we’ve seen a number of teams decimated by untimely injuries.

The Golden State Warriors were bundled out in five games by the Minnesota Timberwolves after Stephen Curry suffered a hamstring injury in Game 1 and missed the remainder of the series.

Cleveland, the top seed in the east, was also beaten in five games by Indiana as All-Star trio Darius Garland, Evan Mobley and Donovan Mitchell all laboured through injuries during the series.

Boston, the defending champ, was dealt a hammer blow when Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles in the final minutes of Game 4 as the Celtics went down to the Knicks. Tatum is expected to miss the majority of the next season.

Denver battled gamely in an epic series against the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder, only for Aaron Gordon to injure his hamstring in the waning moments of Game 6. Gordon heroically hobbled his way through Game 7, but injuries to him and Michael Porter Jr proved to be too much for the Nuggets to overcome.

Tatum is one of two players to suffer Achilles injuries in these play-offs after Milwaukee’s Damian Lillard suffered the same fate in the first round.

Five different players, including Tatum and Lillard, have torn their Achilles this season. Three others — Kyrie Irving, De’Anthony Melton and Moritz Wagner, have torn their ACLs.

The increased number of serious lower leg injuries is a testament to how tough it is to play today’s pace and space era of basketball that requires players to be able to guard almost every position on the floor.

Players have to cut more ferociously, whizzing around multiple screens at high speed on any given possession. Doing that while fatigued in the play-offs increases the likelihood of injury.

Coaches face the conundrum of how many minutes to play their stars through the course of the 82-game regular season. In Cleveland, Coach of the Year winner Kenny Atkinson placed an emphasis on managing his team’s workload, only to see his stars break down in the play-offs. Mitchell’s 31.4 minutes per game were the most for any Cavalier player in the regular season.

Conversely, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau was lambasted all season for playing his starters huge minutes. However, rather than wearing his team down, the large minute load looks to have gotten the Knicks well-conditioned to playing gruelling play-off games.

Three Knicks starters — Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart and OG Anunoby — ranked inside the top 10 for most minutes played during the regular season, with Bridges’s 3,036 minutes leading the way.

It is no surprise that the final four teams in the conference finals are all the ones who have so far escaped the injury bug.

The regular season really does not matter

Every year it is galling to see basketball look like an entirely different sport once the play-offs get underway, and this year has been another example.

The Knicks were mocked all year long for going a combined 0-10 against the Celtics, Cavaliers and Thunder during the regular season, but flipped the script on its head by eliminating the defending champions in six games in their second-round series. They might yet be able to improve on that record should they face OKC in the finals.

Minnesota and Indiana both stumbled out of the gate to start the season, but caught fire at the right time to make the conference finals while knocking off more-fancied opponents along the way.

Cleveland put together one of the best regular season offences in league history, only to see it completely nullified by the Pacers.

When the play-offs roll around everything turns into a pure war of attrition. Teams have longer to scout each other, so beautiful egalitarian offensive systems are left requiring counters upon counters. Every action on both ends of the floor needs to be replicated with double or triple the aggression in the play-offs.

The Cavs played with force on both ends during the regular season, whipping the ball around while cutting aggressively without it. This stood out during the regular season, but when faced with the Pacers’ dogged defence, the beautiful drive-and-kick motion offence that had served Cleveland well all season was nowhere to be seen.

Indiana and New York must both be given credit for the way they seized the opportunity to make the conference finals. Once the Pacers and Knicks sensed blood in the water in the form of hobbled opponents, they rammed home their advantage in ruthless fashion. This is why it pays to be competent. If you remain in the hunt, you’re a little bit of injury luck away from making the conference finals or the finals.

There is no amount of film or practices that can replicate the intensity that is play-off basketball. Every possession matters, whether it is the first of the quarter, directly after a timeout or in the final seconds of a quarter. The most successful play-off teams constantly make these small margins count.

There are no lengthy rest periods in between games once the first round ends, no chance to catch teams on the back end of long road trips or on the second night of a back-to-back, situations that can often inflate regular season win totals.

The NBA needs to find a way to make the regular season more meaningful. The introduction of the NBA Cup, played in the early months of the regular season, was an attempt to make early season games matter.

The easy way to do this is by reducing the number of games in the regular season. Unfortunately, this is something the teams themselves will never agree to due to the amount of revenue they all stand to lose by giving up home games.

Other than the Thunder, who played full-throttle all season to register the best record in the league, the teams that have performed the best in the play-offs are those that seemingly paced themselves through the regular season. It’ll be interesting to see whether the league’s best teams take notice and take the foot off the gas a little more during the pre-All-Star stretch of the season.

Next year is going to look entirely different

It is incredible how much a team’s play-off fortunes can flip what their following season looks like.

The Celtics are the greatest example of this after Tatum’s unfortunate injury. Not only are the Celtics unlikely to win back-to-back titles, their entire window of contention has a cloud of uncertainty now hovering over it.

Regardless of how this play-off run ended, a sky-high tax bill meant Boston was going to be required to make changes to its 2024 title core. How does that look now with Tatum likely to miss the majority, if not all, of the 2025-26 season?

The Celtics have a couple of options. They can simply continue with the majority of this current core next season, hope to hover around 50 or so wins during the regular season and hope Tatum can play a part in next year’s play-offs.

Boston could also get super aggressive by trading one of Jaylen Brown or Derrick White for pieces. The Celtics own their 2026 first-rounder. Could they take a gap year of sorts, like the Spurs did in 1996-97 in order to land Tim Duncan, or like the Warriors did in 2020 when Stephen Curry missed the majority of the season?

Tatum’s injury has ramifications for the rest of the Eastern Conference as well.

With their top Eastern Conference rival hampered, does Cleveland decide to stand pat and try to run it back with its “Core Four” that has now come up short in three straight play-off series?

Giannis Antetokounmpo, whose Bucks were beaten in the first round, is considering his own future. Does he believe he can make a run in the East or does he finally bite the bullet and ask for a trade?

If the Cavs decide their current core isn’t quite good enough, could they potentially entice Milwaukee into a trade that would send Giannis to Cleveland in what would be an almighty swing for the fences?

Linked to the Giannis discussion are a whole host of young teams in the Western Conference, namely the Thunder, the San Antonio Spurs and the Houston Rockets, who all have the assets in both players and draft capital that could appease the Bucks in a theoretical trade.

Even if the Thunder ends up winning the title in the next month, do they pass up the opportunity to potentially add Giannis to their young core?

The Warriors, with Draymond Green, Jimmy Butler and Curry all in their late 30s, are very much in their “last dance” eras.

Curry’s hamstring injury might have denied his best chance for a fifth NBA title, but that won’t stop Golden State being extra aggressive this summer.