He’s actually been pretty healthy this year. He’s played in like 30 consecutive games which is the longest streak of his career. He’s just not that good anymore. He can score really well but that’s about it

Really? I feel like I watch some video essay about him every few months and his “next destination” and “if its too late”

This dude averaged 27 points his second year, with 2pt efficiency better than Shaq and Moses Malone, gliding through the air like prime Derrick Rose and somehow his career has been a train wreck.

Shit pisses me off tbh

I honestly believe that Zion getting a max contract extension is the embodiment of all the worst parts of the NBA.

Pretty disappointing we don’t see more of him. He tore Wemby a new asshole several weeks ago.

The chefs haven’t

I am surprised he is so healthy this year. I have him on my fantasy team and he has been one of the healthiest player lol

He’ll eat the table

I saw a random Duke highlight of him the other day and caught myself thinking damn he’s still at Duke? Lol his nba career just didn’t register in my mind

I routinely forget that he exists until I see media about him being in shape, him being fat, him being injured, or his fetish for women with horrifically ugly BBLs. It’s honestly insane how his career has turned out, given his hype as a prospect lmao

Crazy to think Brandon Roy and Greg Oden were selected by the Same team.

The Zion numbers aren’t accurate. He’s played 254 games. https://www.espn.com/nba/player/stats/_/id/4395628/zion-williamson

‘19-‘20 and ‘20-‘21 were 72 game seasons. Then ‘21-‘25 are 4 full 82 game seasons. And then this season, the Pelicans have played 56 games.

It’s 528 possible regular season games. Zion has played 48.1% of his game. He’s been unavailable for 51.9% of his games.

I’m guessing OP made mistakes for the rest of the players as well.

Zion Williamson

Games played: ~214

Possible games: ~492

Missed: ~278

Unavailable: ~56% of career

Has played in less than half of his potential regular season games. For how young he is this is honestly insane.

Yao is way lower than I remember.

Sam Bowie isn’t even on this list to make me feel even worse. Unavailable 48% of the time. Scoot is off to a nice start. Unavailable 40% of the time.

All this talk lately about killing the draft and then I see a list like this. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.

Do these include Embiid’s first two seasons he missed entirely? Not saying they shouldn’t be included but I do think that changes the narrative somewhat.

I hate seeing Derrick Rose on this list man. Should have went down as one of the greatest to ever do it

Some of your numbers are wrong, it’s not a huge difference but the 2011-2012 season was only 66 games, not the standard 82.

Solid content, thanks for posting this

No Anthony Davis ?

Rose 671 games missed!!!

Great job thanks

i believe you have the embiid numbers backwards, he was at 48% missed and 52% played before the season while playing over half the games this year.

But yea weve so obviously been robbed of a top 10 talent that still might end up top 50 all time. He doesnt get enough credit. When you look at this list anyone near that level of missed games is nowhere near his body of work. That bells pallsy/meniscus 50 bomb vs the knicks is absolutely insane thinking back

He was injured because Portland wanted him to wear lifts.

I sat 2nd row for Ohio state vs Michigan state at MSU during his college season. Wasn’t the most amazing statistical game for him (still ¹⁶⁄₁₁ and 4 blocks) but I will never forget how dominant he was and how imposing he was. And how the crowd went ballistic at him when he came out for warmups and started shooting free throws lefty bc he’d busted his right hand.

The basketball terminator. As a nugget fan, he’s the only player in the league I get nervous when they play

I seriously think he’s supposed to be the goat if he didn’t have degenerative knees

How is someone currently playing near their peak level a “what if”?

It’s dat gumbo

Ingram has missed like 3 games this season and played more minutes than everyone else before he got injured. Yeah, NOLA is cursed.

Insane that it had to be that New Orleans got both Zion and AD. Is New Orleans just cursed and makes people injury prone?

Davis was substantially healthier during his New Orleans career, than elsewhere. He played ~81% of games for New Orleans, and even that’s a little-bit misleadingly low because it includes games in his final season where he was a healthy scratch.

On the other hand, for Los Angeles, he only managed to play about 50%.

New Orleans did boogie in too

Funnily enough, AD was the player with the best availability relative to the other NOLA players. Jrue was injury prone and had to deal with his wife illness, Gordon was extremely injury prone, Omer Asik got Crohn’s a season or 2 after being signed, Tyreke Evans missed a whole year from surgery, Anderson missed almost the whole 2014 season, Cousins famously had a career derailing injury, etc.

I think AD missed at most 20 games in a single season.

the beignets

AD was only injury prone in NOLA before the Pelicans had an actual basketball training staff and just used dudes from the Saints’ staff.

After they hired a real staff he played ⁷⁵⁄₈₂ games in 2017, ⁷⁵⁄₈₂ in 2018 and ⁴¹⁄₄₆ in 2019 prior to the trade request. Then NOLA chose to sit him but he was healthy. He also played ⁶²⁄₇₁ in 2020. His injury issues didn’t start up again until the back to back short offseasons in 2020 and 2021.

And how they are seemingly unconnected. It’s not like he’s aggravating the same knee or ankle over and over. He’s injuring everything but separately.

He also has a ton of games where he left before the game ended. That counts as a “complete game”.

And its the little ones where he leaves for the locker room, misses 1.5 quarters, comes back and doesnt play as aggressively bc he’s nursing a turned ankle/jammed finger/bruised hip. 

Counts as a game played/available, but we only got 1 quarter of him playing his best.

Came to say the same thing. Its never the same injury and seems like he and the team get no momentum with him in the lineup. He will play 10 games then go out for 2 weeks with a finger issue. Come back and play 12 games and tweak an ankle and our for another 2 weeks. Play 20 games and then get poke in the eye and miss more games. So frustrating.

My bad I got lazy since he has a weird amount of games he left half way through or low minutes so basically the AD line was inconsistent.:

Possible games ≈ 1,148
Games played ≈ 777
Games missed ≈ 371
Unavailable ≈ 32%

also, AD had 7 years in new orleans where he was pretty dependable

For a long while AD seemed to be just falling down on random rebounds, spraining an ankle, and missing three weeks, over and over again. Not reason to hate on him, but it’s a bit different than Kawhi missing a season due to torn ACL, or Simmons having multiple back surgeries.

AD is quite famous for leaving games early, which isn’t counted in this. Dude was always bumping into people and leaving the game.

Everyone on this list could have been an all time great. A few of these guys will be HoFers. AD’s current hate come from the trade imo 

It’s because his rate of missing games has gotten dramatically worse over time.

In his first 6 seasons he played 60+ games every year. In the 8 seasons since he has only made it to 60 games twice. The version of him who plays 50 games per season instead of 70 is both fresher in our memories and it covers his entire prime.

Two interesting ones to add for current players as well: Lauri and Lamelo

It really is a combination of playing for the lakers and having freak injuries 5 mins into games

Same for 2011, lockout year

That last part seem kinda targeted, even if unintentional.

Right! Didn’t expect Portland to be catching strays. Thought this would be able current players.

164 are his first 2 seasons.  Considering the nature of the injury the lengthy healing likely allowed him to have the career hes had.  

Games missed after are still high. Just not as high if you consider that.  

Injuries led to him falling off a cliff real quick.

Yeah commented on this in another reply, I didn’t use BBRef numbers since they counted games where players touched the floor and Embiid and AD have a lot of <5 minute games