NBA's 'unprecedented' early season injury crisis has players and coaches searching for answers

MILWAUKEE -- Kevin Durant sat in the corner of the small visitor's locker room at Fiserv Forum and rested his chin on his hand as he contemplated the question everyone around the NBA has been asking after a cataclysmic opening week. 

"I wish I knew, man. I wish I knew the science behind why all of these injuries are happening," Durant said. 

Durant missed the entire 2019-20 season after tearing his Achilles tendon in the 2019 Finals, and knows firsthand the toll that the modern NBA takes on players' bodies. Never has the issue felt as pressing as the past week, as star after star went down with injuries ranging from broken legs to hamstring strains. 

"Some people say the game is so fast, some people say more possessions, some people say 82 games," Durant said, listing some of the theories that have become prevalent. "It's unfortunate to have so many great players out with injuries, but I can't put my hand on it, to be honest bro. I wish I knew but I don't know exactly what the reason is. Just hoping all these guys get back healthy." 

Here's a quick rundown of some of the most notable injuries that have happened in this first week:

Jalen Williams: Broken fibula and dislocated ankle, expected to miss the majority, if not all, of the season

Cason Wallace: Torn labrum, expected to miss the majority, if not all, of the season

Anthony Edwards: Arthroscopic knee surgery, expected to miss multiple months

Jaren Jackson Jr.: Torn MCL, expected to miss 6-8 weeks

Paolo Banchero: High ankle sprain, expected to miss 4-6 weeks

Tyrese Haliburton: Hamstring strain, expected to miss at least two weeks

Jalen Duren: Hamstring strain, expected to miss at least two weeks

Jalen Suggs: Knee bone bruise, expected to miss at least two weeks

Kawhi Leonard: Knee swelling, expected to miss multiple weeks 

And that doesn't account for preseason injuries, including Ben Simmons tearing his Achilles tendon or Kon Knueppel straining his hamstring. Simmons is out for the season, and Knueppel hasn't played yet. 

The rash of injuries, which Rockets coach Ime Udoka called "unprecedented" this early in the season, has already derailed multiple teams' seasons and had a major impact on the title race and major award eligibility. 

Injuries are an unfortunate part of sports. There's nothing anyone can do about Williams getting his leg trapped under his body on a bad fall, or Suggs falling onto Banchero's ankle. But the abundance of soft-tissue injuries is a major concern across the league. "It sucks to see this many people going out for this amount of time early in the season," Udoka said.

As Durant noted, there's no shortage of ideas about what's causing the injury crisis. 

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr has long been the leading voice on the 82-game season being too long. Indiana Pacers coach Rick Carlisle has repeatedly talked about how much faster the game is now. Udoka and Milwaukee Bucks coach Taylor Jenkins both wondered about the effect of shortening training camp and playing fewer preseason games. "We only had three and some of our guys didn't play in all three of those, and so you can see some things creep up early," Udoka said Wednesday. Jenkins added that league and team personnel are "always studying … what we're doing in preseason and the offseason." 

Bucks legend Marques Johnson, a five-time All-Star who led Milwaukee's great teams in the 1980s and now works as a broadcaster, pointed to specific changes in style and the cumulative effect of extensive training.  

"Back in the day, we didn't do the full-speed, hard Euro[step], the deceleration stop, that wasn't part of the game back then. Now it's more prevalent in the game, and I think it creates more wear and tear on the lower extremities, just how hard these guys play, the kind of force that they put on those areas of the body. That's my layman's opinion," Johnson told CBS Sports. 

"The game is played differently and something's gotta give. The body can only take so much and the floor doesn't give," Johnson continued. "And another thing, the deceleration, the Eurostep, all these things that they're doing nowadays. It's not like they wait for games to practice that. They work on that year-round, so they're doing that constantly. Over and over and over again. I just think at some point the muscles, tendons, joints throw up the white flag and say enough." 

Shortening the season has always felt unrealistic from an economic perspective, and how do you legislate the speed at which the game is played, or the moves used to score? Is there actually anything that can be done when players are so big and so strong, and moving with so much force day after day, year after year? 

Rockets guard Fred VanVleet, who missed all of last season with a torn ACL, and is now the president of the National Basketball Players Association, doesn't think so. 

"There's no prevention. You could look across every league in the world, every age group, this is where we are – in the world, not particular to basketball or the NBA," VanVleet told CBS Sports. 

VanVleet added that in his role with the PA, he's been working with the NBA on "different things that we can do to add to the fight because everybody wants everybody out there all the time," which is "one of the few things we all agree on," he said. 

CBS Sports reached out to the league about potential injury-prevention measures earlier this week but had not heard back as of Friday afternoon.

Even if preventing injuries isn't possible, VanVleet still wants to see a "real emphasis on player health."

"It's a multi-billion dollar industry, multi-billion dollar business, I just think we could pour some more resources and some more science, and I think the NBA should be the leading experts on some of these things," VanVleet said. "We take stances when we feel like it's righteous in terms of leading. I think we could lead this area." 

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