Injuries suck
Just felt the need to say that out loud because so many have already piled up in this embryonic NBA season
Some good news: Opening Night in the NBA is less than two weeks away.
Some bad news: After just one week of practices and preseason games, there are too many injuries all over the NBA map to stuff into one story.
Lamenting how many players have already gotten hurt is hardly an ideal tactic to fuel anticipation for the start of NBA games that count, but how can you ignore what's happening out there? If it's not Portland announcing serious setbacks on consecutive days for Robert Williams III (hamstring) and Shaedon Sharpe (shoulder), it's Toronto and Washington issuing almost simultaneous bulletins that the Raptors' RJ Barrett (shoulder) and the Wizards' Malcolm Brogdon (thumb) both came away with pretty worrying knocks during the teams' recent trip to Montreal for one solitary preseason game.
I remember letting out a rather discouraged sigh when my pal Keith Smith tweeted out shortly before the start of training camp about the long list of players who were already dealing with real health concerns as camps were to begin. Included in that group were standout names such Boston's Kristaps Porziņģis (foot), San Antonio's Devin Vassell (foot), then-still-teammates Julius Randle (shoulder) and Mitchell Robinson (ankle) in New York, Memphis' GG Jackson II (foot), Charlotte's Mark Williams (foot), Toronto's Bruce Brown (knee), the Lakers' Jarred Vanderbilt (knee) and, of course, the Clippers' Kawhi Leonard (knee).
There would soon be troubling updates to follow about Milwaukee's Khris Middleton (ankles), New Orleans' Trey Murphy III (hamstring) and the Grizzlies' Jaren Jackson Jr. (hamstring).
And there has been no let up on injuries in the days since, prompting another trusted colleague — Jeff Stotts, as regular readers know, maintains the very valuable In Street Clothes website to keep track of this stuff as well as anyone out there — to sneak me a glimpse of what his data base looks like. To my surprise/horror, Stotts is more than 70 names deep into his first Excel spreadsheet of the season to catalog players dealing with something.
Then again, as Stotts notes, maybe things could be even worse. He recorded 119 injuries leaguewide during exhibition play last season.
I know being the Negative Nellie who puts a list like this together isn't the most upbeat or endearing approach. It's not like there's anything we can do to stop the early rush of health setbacks from piling up. Sadly this isn't NBA 2K; there's no ON/OFF setting for injuries.
But I certainly can't pretend it's not happening, either.
I covered my first preseason game in person Monday night in Dallas and watched Memphis' Ja Morant leave the court twice with ankle tweaks. (The Grizzlies, ravaged by a record-setting number of injuries last season, announced Wednesday after this story went that Morant has been diagnosed with a mild ankle sprain.)
It's doubtful, furthermore, that Luka Dončić would have played in the Mavericks' exhibition opener under any circumstances, but Dončić was in street clothes himself thanks to a left calf contusion after taking an inadvertent kick to the leg in a pickup game on the Sunday before Media Day.
In that same pickup game, by the way, Dallas' Maxi Kleber sustained his own ankle injury after it was said in Mavericks circles that Kleber had a tremendous preparatory summer and had never been more ready to start a season.
Sometimes you just have to talk through all this stuff just to try to make yourself feel better. There's really no other remedy or way to say it in these circumstances: Injuries suck.
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Editor’s Note
It's true: We just established a completely unwanted record in the history of this Substack.
For the third successive week, our Tuesday was so chaotic that we had to push the Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza to a Wednesday. I could have published this edition super late Tuesday night, but I decided that it would be better for all to receive the column at a more civil hour.
My longtime editor
Fortunately I think I will finally be back on track in the wake of all the recent running around by the Tuesday that matters most this month — Opening Night on Oct. 22 — after weeks of seemingly non-stop travel. I have one more trip looming this weekend to Springfield, Mass., to attend 2024 Basketball Hall of Fame ceremonies, then I will finally be stationary for a while to resume standard operations.
It will be helpful to settle down just as the season gets going for real.
Numbers Game
🏀 10
Is October the best month of the year? I think I need to pose this question to a wider audience to get a community read on it. October has to be prominent in the conversation with playoffs happening in the WNBA and Major League Baseball, both college and NFL football in full flow, Premier League, Champions League and international soccer all validating why we call it proper football, regular seasons starting for the NHL and of course our beloved NBA and — on top of anything I left out — it's a month capped by Halloween! Reggie Jackson will always be Mr. October … but I love, love, love my Octobers, too.
🏀 28
Leave it to my pal Kendall Baker, curator of the Y! Sports AM daily newsletter, to point out that we will enjoy a so-called Sports Equinox on Oct. 28. There are 11 NBA games and eight NHL games that night in addition to Giants-at-Steelers in the NFL and a World Series game.
🏀 22
Twenty-two NBA players have signed contract extensions since last season ended, ranging from Jayson Tatum's five-year, $313.9 million extension in Boston to Jose Alvarado's two-year, $9 million extension in New Orleans.
🏀 13
Trivia Question: Ish Smith, who has played for an NBA-record 13 different teams, recently retired to become a scout with the Wizards. Can you name all 13 teams Smith played for?
🏀 6
My fellow Substacker Justin Kubatko has a new piece out asserting that A) players who record a Player Efficiency Rating of at least 20 while playing at least 50% of a team's minutes in any given season can claim to have played at an All-Star level and B) last season was just the sixth time that two rookies reached those levels.
🏀 2
Last season's rookie twosome, of course, was San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama and Oklahoma City's Chet Holmgren.
🏀 5
The other five such rookie duos in league history:
Phoenix's Walter Davis and Milwaukee's Marques Johnson in 1977-78
The Lakers' Magic Johnson and Boston's Larry Bird in 1979-80
San Diego's Terry Cummings and Indiana's Clark Kellogg in 1982-83
Chicago's Michael Jordan and Houston's Hakeem Olajuwon in 1984-85
Orlando's Shaquille O'Neal and Charlotte's Alonzo Mourning in 1992-93
🏀 24
How did Kubatko arrive at those cutoffs? According to his research, since the NBA expanded to 30 teams in the 2004-05 season, there are typically only 24≈ players per season who record a PER of at least 20 while playing 50% of a team's overall minutes ... enough to fill out two 12-man rosters for the All-Star Game.
🏀 206
The Clippers will play host to Portland in Seattle on Friday night. Previous preseason games have popped up Honolulu (Golden State hosting the Clippers), Montreal (Toronto hosting Washington) and East Lansing, Mich. (Detroit hosting Phoenix).
🏀 918
Also this week: The Thunder will play host to the New Zealand Breakers of Australia's National Basketball League on Thursday night and Minnesota hosts Philadelphia on Friday in Des Moines, Iowa.
🏀 702
Next week will bring the NBA back to Las Vegas for one night when the Lakers play host to the Warriors on Oct. 15.
🏀 5
Frank Vogel, who has joined the Mavericks as a coaching consultant, became available this offseason because the Suns dismissed him just one year into a five-year, $31 million contract.
🏀 36
Trivia Answer: Smith, now 36, played for Houston (2010–2011), Memphis (2011), Golden State (2011–2012), Orlando (2012–2013), Milwaukee (2013), Phoenix (2013–2014), Oklahoma City (2014–2015), Philadelphia (2014–2015), New Orleans (2015), Detroit (2016–2019), Washington (2019–2021), Charlotte (stints in 2021–2022 and 2023–2024) and Denver (2022–2023).
Good timing on your "injuries suck" column since we're at yet another international break for soccer whereupon at least two of my beloved Spurs will return with injuries. While I get that money rules in both sports, we just can't keep running these guys into the ground.
In hindsight, perhaps the name "Tuesday Newsletter" added unnecessary pressure 🤣.
An yes, Reggie Jackson will forever be Mr. October!