The opening weeks of the NBA season have been plagued by a lack of stars. Last week’s game was particularly devastating. First, news broke on Thursday that Philadelphia 76ers star guard Tyrese Maxey has gone down with a hamstring injury and will be sidelined for several weeks. Next up is Zion Williamson. Then there’s Ja Morant. Next up is Kevin Durant. Next up is Chet Holmgren. Each schedule is expected to be missed for weeks, not days.
And that was just last week. Each team is fighting to keep their big names on the floor, but many teams are losing that battle. Joel Embiid and Kawhi Leonard haven’t even played in a game yet. (Embiid is scheduled to make his season debut on Tuesday.) Jaylen Brown (missed four games), Stephen Curry (missed three games), Zach LaVine (missed three games) and Anthony Davis (missed one game) will be major players. I got hit. Houston’s Fred VanVleet (hamstring) is expected to miss Tuesday’s first game of the season. Paolo Banchero is absent. Same goes for Scottie Barnes, Dejounte Murray, and Khris Middleton. Overall, a closer look at the numbers shows that the NBA is in the midst of a health crisis.
This is the second year of the NBA’s player participation policy, with star players missing more than 1,000 games this season, and the number of games missed by star players has increased by 24% so far this season compared to last season. As the 2024 Emirates NBA Cup gets underway on Tuesday, a growing number of injured stars are seriously dampening the excitement surrounding the second in-season tournament.
Hopefully this is just a blip early in the season, but there’s reason to believe the dark clouds hanging over the league will continue.
Injuries are going in the wrong direction across the NBA.
Lakers star LeBron James said he plans to play in all 82 games this season. It’s certainly a noble goal. However, he is still dwindling among the list of stars who can pursue that honor.
Using the NBA’s official definition of a star player, codified in the league’s player participation policy as having been on an All-Star team or an All-NBA team in the past three seasons, this season there are 49 star players, from LeBron to Lauri Markkanen. There is. Through the team’s first 10 games this season, the star player has already missed a whopping 83 games, more than the 67 total during the same period last season. Less than a month into the NBA season, 20 of the league’s 49 stars have missed at least one game this season due to injury or suspension, leaving James out of 82 games.
Star injuries are inevitable in high-impact sports. But the surge in injuries is happening faster than usual. In recent seasons, star players have played about 85 to 90 percent of their games during the first month of the season, before the inherent violence of the game begins to take its toll on the body and winter illnesses attack the immune system. I played. Star players’ participation rate has generally been below 80% this season, hovering around 78% in recent days.
The problem is, that star designation only scratches the surface of health issues. Other high-profile athletes who do not fit the official title of star athlete have also been disqualified. OKC center Chet Holmgren will most likely be out for eight to 10 weeks after breaking his hip en route to his first All-Star appearance. Boston center Kristaps Porzisis has not played all season. Denver’s high-flying forward Aaron Gordon will be out for several weeks. Holmgren, Porgis, Gordon, etc. aren’t considered “stars” by the league’s definition, but they certainly could be considered stars for their respective teams. And they will be removed from the battle line for the time being.
InStreetClothes.com’s Jeff Stotts has been publicly tracking injuries longer than anyone in the NBA world. By his count, those numbers are growing across the league, not just the big names. According to his database, the NBA overall has already lost 686 games to injury in the first three weeks of the season, a dramatic increase from 507 games during the same period last season. That’s a 35% increase from last season and a 16% increase from 2023-24 levels, according to Stotts’ data provided to Yahoo Sports.
Either way, the overall number of games due to star player absences or injuries has increased significantly, which is bad enough for players and teams to survive an 82-game season. However, it appears to have had a negative impact on the product and alienated disillusioned fans who wonder where the stars have gone.
When the players suffer, the product suffers too.
Looking at the spectator data, injury issues loom large. According to tracking by Sports Media Watch, ESPN’s games in the opening weeks of the season were down 34% compared to the same period last year, with an average of 600,000 fewer fans watching. TNT games were down 14% in the first two weeks. While these declines could be explained by a variety of factors, including the 2024 election and rising NFL viewership, the injury variable has been a major stumbling block for league partners.
Nothing illustrates the NBA’s growing problems more clearly than last Wednesday’s nationally televised game between the Los Angeles Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers. The game will feature the Clippers, led by Kawhi Leonard and James Harden, and former teammate Paul George, who defected this offseason to form a superteam with the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey. It was supposed to be the most intriguing star-studded matchup of the early season. George missed the first five games of the season with a bone bruise in his knee, but was ready to play.
This was a showcase for the 2024-25 season and a celebration of all the new and exciting things happening this season.
Instead, Kawhi Leonard did not play. Neither did Embiid.
The anticipation was further heightened by the fact that the game would be held at the brand new, state-of-the-art Intuit Dome, the stunning new home of the Los Angeles Clippers. Ahead of the season, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer hit up the media on “60 Minutes” to promote his new $2 billion building, which is buzzing in the tech world.
Many fans didn’t bother coming to the Sixers-Clippers game. Official attendance was just 15,627, the lowest reported number for the team’s first seven home games. The visuals got even worse, as videos from fans inside the building showed bands of empty seats.
This match was a big hit on TV. It drew just 1.19 million viewers, a 36% decrease from the same time slot last season, according to Sports Media Watch tracking. That equates to about 650,000 fewer viewers than last season’s Warriors-Nuggets tilt.
From a player health perspective, it’s not a good sign when your brightest star player is injured and misses key games. This is a real medical problem, and the NBA is trying to solve it by reducing the number of back-to-backs, adding more medical staff and extending the All-Star break.
But there is another problem that is equally difficult to deal with. It is a mushroom cloud of repulsion that arises from absence.
Embiid’s argument started with injury talk.
The player’s injury sparked a recent physical altercation between Embiid and a local reporter that resulted in Embiid’s three-game suspension. Fundamentally, it stems from a columnist’s accusation that Embiid was not injured enough to play and was voluntarily sitting out games. From my perspective, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes certainly went too far when he cited Embiid’s late brother and Embiid’s son in his column. Apparently Mr. Hayes felt the same way, as he deleted his remarks in the column.
But the deep distrust that Hayes caused was the result of the Sixers’ lackluster self-reporting regarding Embiid’s knee injury. The question remains: Is Embiid injured or just resting? Although the team insisted it was just injury management and not an actual injury, the team also told ESPN’s Tim Bontemps that the Sixers star will likely strategically miss back-to-back games going forward. Fans and bettors alike were at a loss trying to figure out what was going on with Embiid.
The league wasn’t happy about this, and rightly so. Before the season, the NBA decided to nationally broadcast the Sixers’ five consecutive losing games. The team was essentially sending a message that it was punting first on ABC, ESPN and TNT. Sportsbooks were trying to set boundaries between matches and futures, picking breadcrumbs.
The NBA fined the Sixers $100,000 for “inconsistent” public statements by director of basketball operations Daryl Morey and coach Nick Nurse regarding Embiid’s status. Three days after the fine, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the Sixers discovered “mild swelling” in his knee during training camp, a detail that was not disclosed in previous injury reports. Would Hayes have had the guts to call out Embiid’s family if the Sixers had made that clear during training camp? Perhaps, but we’ll never know.
It all comes down to player health. George, Maxey and Embiid have yet to play together and likely won’t until Thanksgiving at the earliest. It looks like the super team will turn into a huge disappointment. Looking at this situation, the Sixers’ situation feels eerily similar to the much-hyped Brooklyn Nets triumvirate of Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and James Harden. They eventually disbanded after only playing a few games together.
The more things like this happen, the less interested fans will be in the product. Hopefully fan apathy early in the season is just random noise that will resolve itself later. However, injuries tend to snowball as the season progresses. These things can accelerate rapidly. Durant, Holmgren, Morant, Maxey and Williamson looked healthy a week ago, but now they’ll be out for several weeks. If history is any guide, the worst is yet to come.
The well-intentioned player participation policy established in advance of the 2023-24 season has not had the same impact on players’ bodies as it did last regular season. At the beginning of the season, more star players were on the court than in previous seasons. The NBA Cup was a success from that standpoint, as all stars appeared in the first game of the season tournament, except for Morant (suspended) and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who was suffering from a knee injury. But that honeymoon period quickly ended. By the All-Star break, the number of absentees began to skyrocket. By March, Star participation had plummeted to less than 70 percent.
This continued into the postseason, with Giannis Antetokounmpo, Jimmy Butler, and half of the New York Knicks roster going limp at the worst possible time. According to Stotts’ tracking, he missed 221 games in the playoffs due to injury, an increase of about 20% from a year ago when adjusting for the number of games played.
As we are seeing now, the injury problem is not over yet, but it is too early to diagnose the cause of the injury spike.
Early last season, the entire league rallied behind the prospect of a new in-season tournament and deal with Monster TV Media, and Carrot could very well have been motivated to play. Those efforts paid off. In July, the NBA announced an 11-year, $76 billion pact that alleviates all sorts of concerns in the short term.
But in the long run, it remains a hot topic. It was hoped that the PPP would motivate players and mark the beginning of a new era in which they could play in front of audiences around the world. But this isn’t a question of willingness to play, as Embiid’s propensity for arguments and injuries is starting to grow. Last season’s early-season success story is starting to look like the exception rather than the newly established baseline. With injuries hitting some of the biggest names, the league’s star shortage problem is far from over.
