You’re also on soft, grass/astro turf, not hardwood. Probably the biggest difference, really.

It’s also the European training systems. Kids get plucked at a young age and immediately join professional clubs with vested long term interests in these kids developing on time. There’s no benefit to running the kids in to the ground before they’ve developed and made it to the main squad as an adult.

In America, no one gives a fuck about that. Some AAU coach gets a kid they think is the next LeBron and they run him in to the ground so the coach can benefit. Then that kid goes to middle school and that coach does the same thing. And then high school. Then college. All these people see are pay checks and stepping stools.

They’re built different

All of these excuses were made to dance around the culprit which is the proliferation of physical enhancing drug use. Nobody wants to deal with this topic because millions of dollars are at stake for all parties concerned.

For Achilles is still possibly the ramp up in intensity, not just in the playoffs.

From 3 months of non basketball intensity -> preseason there is a ramp up in intensity.

From regular season -> playoffs there is a ramp up in intensity.

Remember that tendons tend to adapt to loads but they take some time to adapt.

There is even a recent study checking for this exact thing:

“Conclusion: Significant workload spikes were found in the 10 to 15 games preceding Achilles ruptures for NBA players. Veteran players carried heavier cumulative workloads, whereas younger players ruptured tendons under lighter use…”

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42502501/

Its a crazy complex problem to solve with lots of unintended consequences. We just outlawed the DNP-Rest era few seasons ago because fans stopped showing up when Jokic, LeBron, etc. only played 15 road games a season. Now the workload is so high relative to the players health that we can make shadow All-NBA teams with the players who got moderate injuries during the season which cost them 3 weeks of games.

Hell, the league should probably investigate raising the rim and widening the court to see if it optimizes for a lower explosiveness athleticism.

Idk you’d have to get rid of the minimum games played for awards rule… what would that even look like?

They already are though even though Silver’s evil ass tries to find them for it. Look at the Laker Clipper game right now

Nuance isn’t gonna let us pat ourselves on the back.

Boooooo boring

There isn’t one correct answer but the shoes are definitely the wrong answer

Soccer is dealing with an injury crisis of their own. The simple fact is that there’s so much money at stake in professional sports that players are pushing their physical limits bc the financial rewards are so high while the leagues are prioritizing profit over player welfare

Another difference between Europe and the NBA is that in Europe you’re actually allowed to rest players, and it’s up to the players and coaches themselves to determine if they need to rest or not.

In the NBA it’s the league who decides that certain star players have to play unless they’ve already become injured.

During the summer I’d play pick up at the ymca for about 4 hours a day on weekdays then AAU tournaments would be anywhere from 4-10 games on weekends. This was in the 2000s

Idk I played the Canadian equivalent of aau and it definitely was taxing but i don’t think it was too unhealthy I mean when you’re young you have energy to burn for days and it’s not like there’s a tournament every single week.

The real wear and tear honestly is from hard practicing. All the top guys would practice hard every day and didn’t do other sports to develop other muscle groups.

But there is also the conundrum that basketball is so damn competitive now like the talent is so so so high level you have to train like a madman from young just to have a chance to make it… if you don’t you’re gonna be wayyy behind all the guys grinding day in day out even if your legs will be healthier for it long term

Im sitting here with mitochondria damage from long covid wishing i could just lift weights again and not feel god damn horrible for 6 days until i recover…. GTFOH with 10 games in a weekend.

Of course there are many factors but early specialisation and overload is the primary driver.

It’s like asking what causes lung cancer in a 3-pack-a-day smoker. Are genetics and environment and diet all factors? Sure. But it’s also OK to say ‘correct’ if someone says it’s smoking that caused the cancer.

Wemby playing darts… just put in on trip 20’s without releasing the dart. Probably be an insane swimmer as well…. Huge hands and feet, along with being aerodynamic and crazy long stroke

Idk if I go that far. There are a tons of positives and benefits from playing multiple sports. You don’t need to put ur child at a young age in one sport year round. Playing other sports helps children develop other skills that can help in sports.

I’m not referring to weight training at all. I’m mostly talking about the same thing you are, If you look at where most NBA players come from, the elite youth programs and the modern D1 programs, they already spend a lot of time training mobility training and tendon strength and band work etc.

All these athletes already do work on the things like diversifying the type of load and strain on the joints that playing another sport claims to offer. What’s a season of cross country going to offer a young basketball player if they’re already regularly doing long conditioning runs off the court? How is volleyball really functionally different on the joints? It’s the same floor and the same jumping and lateral motions.

The effect in the study you are talking about is tiny (63.9 games played vs 67.1) and the corroborating findings regarding distance traveled could just suggest that stronger athletes play a wider variety of sports. The effect also becomes statistically insignificant and unpublishable if you include Markelle Fultz which the study chose not to.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11700406/

It’s this one right?

The dude your replying to probably knows jack shit about kinesiology, sports medicine, etc lol

I’m IP squatting it I don’t advocate peptides I’m just waiting for somebody to offer me money for it

No you. Overspecialization is a stuck discourse I’m sick of hearing this point and I’d like to offer and defend my perspective on it.

It’s really subtle but Haliburton has also been jumping off his opposite leg to compensate for his Achilles heel tore and he hurt that hamstring.

What is the negative step move you are talking about?

There’s always cases where you have to push off your back foot tho. and there’s 1000 negative step that don’t result in an achilles tear. Planting and pushing outside your center of mass is fundamental to change of direction. As much as you want to try to be cautious of not doing it I don’t see how you could play nba basketball without pushing off your back foot

The real cause of the tear is wear and tear and overloading the tendon over the course of an nba season. Not giving enough time for load management and strengthening due to the crazy schedule they have

I think it could be the same as a pitcher throwing 100 MPH gas every pitch vs learning how to throw off speed pitches and control a game.

Big offensive numbers and scoring more points than the other team is obviously part of the game, but being so good that you control the pace and dictate the speed is different.

The problem is that involved slowing and lowering the amount of office and you know Silver would rather ban prediction markets and sports gambling than do that.

Reinstate the old illegal defense rules. 4 out at the 3pt line and defenders have to go with them even if they can’t shoot (or intentionally double someone). Dump down to the post so your best player can get a 1v1 or an easy to see double coming. The other 4 can get a bit more rest during the post up.

How? How do you rule change pace out of the game?

No. They need to stop playing 80+ games a season. Play 40-50 and call it a day.

Game is never gonna just slow down, athletes only get faster and stronger. we need to eliminate b2bs and reduce the amount of games played.

I always assumed they meant slapping the floor to let everyone know you’re real serious about D.

Lol, He wouldnt even get near him

FIBA for sure, specifically cause they don’t have the 3 second rule so you can just park your big guy in the paint. Yeah I knew bringing up Jordan could make it sound like I’m shitting on him, but he would still be awesome obviously. He would just be playing differently.

I agree with the points in this thread about defenses being more subtle and sophisticated than they used to be, but that’s largely a result of defenses desperately trying to keep up with the even more profound innovations on offense, and failing.

It’s objectively easier to score nowadays. The average team put up 115.8 points per 100 possessions in 2026, as compared to 107.6 in 1996, and we’ve seen an explosion in 30 ppg level scorers.

In today’s NBA Jordan would definitely find it easier to score, not harder– especially younger MJ. He would have practiced his 3 point shot a lot more coming into the league and he’d benefit from the dramatically improved spacing and reduction of bodies and shot blockers at the rim.

Those aren’t contradictory. Luka’s only played in modern times and those other leagues have made the same defensive improvements, but the NBA’s rules regarding the gather, how fouls are called, and strict basket interference definitely makes it easier to score than those other leagues. The defense is inarguably much better these days, but the rules have also been tipping more and more in favor of offense because the league doesn’t want to go back to the dead ball era of the 2000s.

Has it ever occurred to you Luka is trolling the NBA with those comments? He knows the rules, he knows NBA players can’t sit in the middle of the court waiting.

Jordan would have killed it in any era, come on now.

I don’t know man. I don’t disagree with your premise but having hand checking being legal has to be accounted for in your equation. That is a big deal.

Imagine taking prime Draymond Green and dropping him onto the bad boy pistons, he would have killed several people and won 5 DPOY awards lol

The game was more physical then but is much more physically demanding now. There was no freedom of movement rule, no 3-second rule, no painted restricted circle, had hand checking, allowed using forearms, had far more traditional bigs, was much slower, and the players were much more condensed.

All of those changes have improved the game, but they’ve also opened it up so much that they’re now pushing up against the limits of human physiology.

Players in MJ’s era had far more bumps and bruises, but they weren’t pushing their bodies to the point of exploding their ligaments.

I found that interesting because Sweden and other Scandinavian countries were at the top of the list. Aren’t they usually some of the tallest countries? From what Wikipedia said, US still has the tallest average person, but Scandinavian countries are likely much more active than average Americans.

It could be that height is a contributing factor as well as the current pace of the game. For example it doesn’t seem like tennis players have Achilles injuries as much although I could be wrong or that may not be a fair comparison. The lower shoes that people wear now could be a factor as well. I think it would be worth researching because injuries suck so much and take so much away from the game and competition.

I mean of course it’s more games as well by your own argument. If a player plays 40 games of high intensity. 41 games is gonna be that much more strain on your body. And on and on. Soccer is increasing games left and right on the calendar

Thats a different (and much worse) problem than leg/foot injuries to active players

It’s faster than the lowest pace ever for the league that was the 90s and 00s, but the 80s and 70s was higher than today. It’s more of returning to the mean.

Stop using terminology you don’t understand.

Who cares. It’s an online forum and English is my third language lol.

Maybe if the shoes were thigh highs? Make it so they can’t move any joints below the hip and we’ll save some ankles.

And they would increase strain on the knees, leading to more MCL tears. There’s a reason why the ankle needs to be able to move.

Copying my other comment Study showing High tops don’t help

Followed over the course of a 2-month intramural season, 15 ankle injuries occurred during 39,302 minutes of player-time: 7 in high-top shoes, 4 in low-top shoes, and 4 in high-top shoes with inflatable air chambers. The injury rates (injuries per player-minute) were 4.80 x 10(-4) in high-top shoes, 4.06 x 10(-4) in low-top shoes, and 2.69 x 10(-4) in high-top shoes with inflatable air chambers. There was no significant difference among these 3 groups, leading to the conclusion that there is no strong relationship between shoe type and ankle sprains.

Lace up ankle braces are what you want. But I have seen players with them on and they are not as agile so most will refuse to wear it unless they have a recent injury.

They obviously need to be wearing full sets of sabatons and greaves. No twisting of ankles allowed in those things.

Anecdotally speaking I’ve rolled my ankles playing basketball probably a cumulative 8-10 times, and every time I didn’t was wearing high top shoes.

Something about the weight and balance of them I think contributed to them.

The most stable I’ve ever felt in a shoe was in the Kobe 9s which were modeled off of boxing shoes. Also high tops, but felt much more stable and grounded. The high tops part was more of a sleeve.

I say this to illustrate that bulky hard style high tops aren’t necessarily the answer imo.

It’s probably a combination of the intensity and volume of today’s game combined with poorly designed shoes when it comes to injury prevention vs style.

No

Not better, just different.

That’s an interesting lead, the shoes, because if there’s something to do about it, it could be done without affecting the competition. You’re never going to ask the players to stop pushing to their limits. But if you can limit everyone the same way and it effects the risk of injury, I would say that’s pretty good.

Bill Simmons is a cult leader for snarky white basketball fans who feel they’re above all the players.

Hence yes the dumb players with more wealth/technology/research are wearing bad shoes and that’s just it. See the 82% positive upvotes here

No it’s not. Socks aren’t stiff (except yours) so it’s not the same at all.

Maybe boxing shoes have something to teach 😏

That is definitely a factor. They should encourage more multi sport athletes in youth sports.

Yeah, I wish I knew how to correlate Jamals performance changes, if any after his NB sponsorship.

Weight is what matters, not height. Perimeter players are far heavier. The 80s/90s height and weight is heavily distorted by big tall players who just stood around.

yeah you have centers being dragged out to the 3pt line 3 different times during a single possession. multiple that by every possession, over and over and over all season long. that’s a lot of fucking running and stopping.

this literally never happened before the 3pt revolution.

EVERY player is constantly being forced to run around and switch and cover all areas of the floor.

the only way to prevent this is in my opinion to get rid of the corner 3s.

have the 3pt arc end at the sides and eliminate corner 3s. that’s the only thing i can think of that can actually shrink the court and make players cover less ground per game

I switched to zero drop for running and it drastically improved my ankles and achilles

This is what I was looking for and have never seen it mentioned in threads like this. I definitely think this contributes to the high number of Achilles injuries lately along with the other factors mentioned.

Shoes that have a high heel drop basically shorten your Achilles tendon and weaken your calf muscle. And these players are wearing them nearly every second they’re awake. And you see a lot of these Achilles injuries happening on the negative step. It’s because their Achilles aren’t stretched out! I think switching to a zero drop shoe would help in the long run. Takes some time to adjust but when your foot is flat on the ground, your Achilles is in its normal state.

I had to switch to zero drop shoes because of a neuroma in my foot. The first few weeks my Achilles were KILLING me because they had spent my entire life being shortened by high drop shoes. Now, after getting used to them, I could never ever go back to anything above a 4mm drop. Anything above that to me feels like I’m wearing high heels hahah

I’m no doctor but this is a really interesting theory to me

Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say but wasn’t super articulate, so thanks for commenting better than me. In my mind I was including slowing down/stopping in the changing direction part.

And? You don’t need to do the step-back 3. If it’s dangerous, stop fucking doing it. It’s an abuse of the spirit of the rules anyway.

Sure. My point wasn’t that there are studies showing that shoes in basketball or something like that cause injuries. It’s just that we shouldn’t diregard shoes as potential source of injuries other than ankles and that Simmons idea isn’t really that controversial.

Tbf. if I were to guess I would say that for me most likely is that low top shoes do impact rate of injuries, but not directly, but rather by making movesets that increase injuries easier. Resulting in players being more likely to play that way.