Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.¹¹⁷⁷⁄_{23259671261463385}#bibr12-23259671261463385

New medical study examining Achilles tears in the NBA said there was some correlation to increased workload in the 10 and 15 games before a player tore their Achilles. It found that players who got hurt averaged more minutes in the 10 and 15 game periods before the injuries than their season average.

The study said: “No significant associations were identified between (Achilles tear rupture) occurrence and age, player position, role, early sport specialization, or measures of schedule congestion.”

AssistSpare5860

110 | 3 hours ago

Wow, so this kinda implies that players should be consistently playing at their highest workload.

Was Thibs right??

boyWHOcriedFSD

65 | 3 hours ago

If you play 48 minutes per game, you can’t increase your workload, causing an Achilles injury.

BigL88 | Celtics

13 | 3 hours ago

But we also need to eliminate overtime for safety. Bring on the ties!

oochiewallyWallyserb | Knicks

4 | 2 hours ago

Or just have Josh hart run suicides for 5 minutes after every non overtime game. Just to make sure.

LVRaiders2026

2 | an hour ago

Achilles hack

oochiewallyWallyserb | Knicks

1 | 30 minutes ago

Achilles hate this one trick

oochiewallyWallyserb | Knicks

20 | 3 hours ago

Thibs hands shaking uncontrollably reading this study

LegendaryThunderFish | Knicks

18 | 3 hours ago

Thibs guys were surprisingly durable in the post season besides 2024 when everyone exploded

TheGrayTiger | Knicks

12 | 2 hours ago

Nah man….throughout their playoff runs prior to last season, almost everyone had injuries. OG was out, Brunson had nagging leg and foot injuries, and players were visibly gassed at end of games.

Brown managed player minutes much better with very few injuries. However, Thibs did prime their conditioning during his tenure so by playoff time, the players were able to play 40 and go all out. It was funny to see JB at the line in 4th quarters with his mouth closed while SA players were gasping for air and tugging on their shorts.

dae5oty

6 | 3 hours ago

Saint Stephen, Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King, Tom Thibodeau.

Presidentclash2

0 | 3 hours ago

No he was wrong. You can’t just play players 48 minutes and not give the bench run and not give the starters a breather. By the fourth quarter, everyone was gassed and it did lead to other types of overuse injuries

NatiHanson | Bulls

1 | an hour ago

Luol Deng would disagree

SwizzGod | Lakers

-1 | 3 hours ago

I’ve always wondered about this. It used to be practice hard so you can avoid injuries during the game. Somewhere along the way the consensus philosophy changed and it back more about load management

c10bbersaurus | Grizzlies

105 | 3 hours ago

I will just repost my reply to a similar thread 5 days ago about the same study:

“So how many players had similar spikes in minutes that didn’t lead to any serious injury?

Are we talking ¹⁹⁄₁₉? ¹⁹⁄₃₈? ¹⁹⁄₁₀₀?

I like the framework of studying this, though.”

Jaerba | DET

25 | 3 hours ago

The framework it sets up for future studies is probably the strongest part of the paper.

It has pretty large limitations in the data it’s using today and explicitly talks about that. But it has good ideas for how the next generation of studies could be improved.

Also people need to realize it’s framed around Achilles tears, so even when those future studies are more definitive, they’re still only covering one type of major injury. It seems very possible that the best practices for preventing those tears might not apply (or could even be counter) for other major injuries.

jimmylamstudio

31 | 3 hours ago

Oh I see, so we must ban the playoffs

Some_Signal_6866

6 | 3 hours ago

Time for wheel chair basketball to become mainstream

Revan_84

19 | 3 hours ago

This isn’t a good study. This is like a college upperclassman study.
No control group, incredibly small sample size, overlapping data, and the increased workload is 2 minutes per game more.

ecclectic_collector

16 | 3 hours ago

study funded by Tom Thibodeau

Equidissection | Mavericks

14 | 3 hours ago

I had a convo with a physical therapist and they mentioned that injuries are often less about a particular incident and more about athlete load outpacing capacity. The key to injury management is more about raising capacity in a controlled way over time so athletes can manage load without their bodies failing on them.

Kinda interesting that the study seems to show that very directly. And also obv it’s not easy to just have athletes work out more / play more minutes because they’re already on the edge of what their bodies are capable of.

toomuchsoysauce | Spurs

5 | 2 hours ago

Very true. Makes me even more fortunate for the Spurs med staff giving Victor so much time to ramp up after his early season calf strain last year.

It was “officially” a 2-3 week recovery period but they held him out for 12 straight games (4 weeks) and then he came off the bench, playing fewer than 25 min per game for the next 6 straight games (2 weeks) before starting and playing 26 min in a win vs OKC on Christmas.

Worldly-Use5316 | Lakers

9 | 3 hours ago

More load management is on the menu

walterdog12 | BOS

19 | 3 hours ago

I believe it’s the opposite, no?

It’s implying that it’s basically useless to load management during the season if you’re going to suddenly be playing 35 minutes a game in a 7 game series, or have your rotation drastically shorten from the regular season to the playoffs.

OblivionNA | Heat

7 | 3 hours ago

Yeah it seems like your choices are. Your star plays 36-38mpg or you deal with your star playing 32mpg in the playoffs and you find ways to win without risking your star blowing their Achilles

Guilty-Cow4325 | Knicks

9 | 3 hours ago

That sounds like one of the possible correlations you would first take a look at.

freemydogs | Raptors

2 | 3 hours ago

why are you posting this again

aviatorbassist

1 | 3 hours ago

If you want to effectively load manage you need players to player higher minutes and less games.

SalehHulud | Mavericks

1 | 3 hours ago

What about soft tissue though?

Icy_Category_2275

1 | 3 hours ago

So there is still no correlation medically speaking between calf injuries and achilles injuries

OddIndustry6073

3 | 3 hours ago

There is, the evidence just hasn’t been found yet.

Like when they say, hot hand is a myth, nah, you just never hooped

OddIndustry6073

1 | 3 hours ago

This is dumb. KD, Hali, and Tatum happened in the playoffs.

You play more minutes, and through pain/injuries in the plays compared to the regular season, but the intensity of the playoffs is extraordinary.

HarrY552011

1 | 3 hours ago

Cancel the playoffs..too much workload.

Weak-Bid2774 | Pistons

1 | 3 hours ago

Is the takeaway then you shouldn’t increase player workload in the playoffs compared to the regular season

Revan_84

1 | 2 hours ago

Since the increased workload is 2 minutes of more playing time the takeaway is don’t get in foul trouble

MinnesnowtaWolves | Timberwolves

1 | 2 hours ago

Can we apply this outward to those who had the same workload but DIDN’T get an achilles tear? Not that I’m disparaging the data, because… well.. obviously it’s due to overuse, but… it would be interesting to figure out if the threshold is narrower than we think.

justlobos22

1 | 2 hours ago

its called the playoffs

MumrikDK

1 | an hour ago

Here 4 days ago.

JonSnowsPeepee

1 | 17 minutes ago

I could not be less interested in a topic

Brod24 | Magic

-1 | 3 hours ago

Basketball isn’t the reason for more Achilles ruptures as we’re also seeing increases in society at large. This isn’t an NBA problem, it’s a Western civilization problem.

pchongg96

-3 | 3 hours ago

I’m a firm believer that there’s too many nba games in a season now.

The NBA’s greed is above the health of their players and it’s always been obvious but nowadays it’s become so painfully obvious that it’s sad to see the number of athletes who would’ve had potentially all star+ careers be cut short by injuries.

Obviously these studies point to that but all the NBA sees is more games = more money

halfdecenttakes | 76ers

6 | 3 hours ago

But there isn’t “more games”

It’s been 82 games since the 60s.

moshercycle | Spurs

3 | 3 hours ago

I think they mean in context to the evolution of the sport. Much, much more movement and speed.

UnablePerformance131 | Timberwolves

2 | 3 hours ago

I mean, they could slow down the movement/speed by calling the dribble/carry rules tight again.

moshercycle | Spurs

4 | 3 hours ago

Officiating is a whole other topic that would impact many aspects of the game. So yes, it could but half the players perceived quality would plummet which the NBA probably feels the product would suffer as well.

UnablePerformance131 | Timberwolves

1 | 3 hours ago

I think short term it might cause the perceived quality to plummet, but long term people would forget about it. I personally think that more 100-95 or 90-88 games are more interesting than the 120-118 games. Maybe less 20 PPG scorers, but the best players will stick out even more and be less likely to get as many Achilles/soft tissue injuries.

I also feel like if they went to enforcing the dribble/carry rules more, they would have to ease into it rather than pushing the league back into the 60s-80s from where it is today. Better to get the players to adjust to a new way of playing.

pchongg96

1 | 3 hours ago

Yes exactly. NBA players are generally more athletic and overall the level that athletes push themselves has increased but there’s been little adjustment for the safety of the athletes. Although I’m sure medical practices have improved the stats are showing they aren’t able to keep up.

halfdecenttakes | 76ers

1 | 3 hours ago

That’s a totally different thing than the league insisting on more games at the cost of player health tho.

That’s not the same thing at all.

pchongg96

1 | 3 hours ago

Oh I didn’t mean there used to be less I just think in general there should be less games in terms of the health of the players. I didn’t even know there were less games in the 60s lol

Rytlock9 | MIA

1 | 3 hours ago

Yes but they ran a lot more now than in the 60s, how do you think wilt played 48 minutes per game? Doing what Steph does sprinting around for 30 minutes to get open?

halfdecenttakes | 76ers

1 | 3 hours ago

The game evolving to a point where player safety becomes a question isn’t the league on insisting on more games.

Players have to agree to a shorter schedule which they do not want because money goes down.

Zestyclose-Draft-724 | Lakers

2 | 3 hours ago

They’ll be fine. These NBA players are getting paid to be millionaires, because the NBA generates billions

pchongg96

1 | 3 hours ago

LOL they do get the bag

captmorgan50 | Thunder

1 | 3 hours ago

I have been saying for a while now that they should do anyway with conferences. Play 1 home 1 away against everyone. No back to back games. No 3 games in 4 days. Seed 1-16 and go.

Equalizes the schedule. No advantages or disadvantages. And I build in load management to the schedule. 60ish regular season games is enough.

But like you said. I cut 25% of the regular season.

Revan_84

1 | 3 hours ago

These studies don’t point to that

pchongg96

1 | 3 hours ago

Ur right in that this one isn’t directly pointing to that. But it is showing that increased work load over an extended period correlated to more Achilles tears which I think is relevant to what I was saying.

Revan_84

1 | 3 hours ago

That “increased workload” they are highlighting is less than 2 minutes

pchongg96

1 | 3 hours ago

lol I agree with you this study has some big holes but I still stand by what I said. There are better studies that have been done that show the correlation.

The sample size of this study I think is kinda small too 19 athletes is not enough

scy11a_snow

-4 | 3 hours ago

Load management go brrrrr