The NBA suffered yet another playoffs-altering injury Wednesday when Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard was declared out for Game 5 against the Utah Jazz. Who could have seen this rash of high-profile absences coming?
“They all didn’t wanna listen to me about the start of the season,” James said on Twitter. “I knew exactly what would happen.”
“These injuries isn’t just ‘PART OF THE GAME,’” he added. “It’s the lack of PURE RIM REST rest before starting back up.”
James, whose Lakers lost all-star forward Anthony Davis to injury before losing to the Phoenix Suns in the first round of the playoffs, was referring to the NBA’s decision to start this season in late December. That made for a notably short offseason given that the pandemic-delayed 2020 Finals — won by James, Davis and the Lakers — did not end until Oct. 11.
The degree to which the 2019-20 campaign was pushed back prompted discussion that this season might not start until sometime in January, but the league ultimately opted to get going just before Christmas. The NBA trimmed the regular season to 72 games, as opposed to the usual 82, and the start date allowed for the annual slate of Christmas Day games and a postseason staged mostly during a time of year to which fans have become accustomed.
That helped the NBA’s bottom line financially, but it came at the expense of an offseason that had been averaging almost 156 days (per hoopshype.com). By comparison, James and Co. had just 72 days last year before meaningful games returned. The NBA’s shortest previous offseason, leading into the 2017-18 season, ran for 127 days.
And I know all about the business side too/factors so don’t even try me! I get it.
— LeBron James (@KingJames) June 16, 2021
After the players’ union voted to approve the league’s plan for a Dec. 22 start with 72 regular season games, James used a face-palm emoji to respond to the prospect of a chopped-in-half offseason. In early December, James told the Los Angeles Times of his initial reaction to the news, “Being completely honest, I wasn’t expecting that, because the early conversations that were going on, I was hearing it would kind of be a mid-January start and training camp would kind of start after Christmas.”
Once the action got underway, players who made this season’s all-star rosters wound up missing an unprecedented 19 percent of their teams’ regular season games (per ESPN), not including absences related to coronavirus protocols. A relative ironman for much of his 18-year career, James sat out most of the second half of this season with a high ankle sprain that he tweaked shortly before his Lakers faced the Golden State Warriors in a play-in game for the postseason.
In the playoffs, the 36-year-old James suited up for all six of his team’s games, but appeared noticeably less explosive and effective than usual. Davis, an eight-time all-star who was instrumental in last fall’s championship run, suffered a groin injury in Game 4 vs. the Suns, missed Game 5 and left Game 6 early as the Lakers’ title defense came to a quick and uninspiring end.
In addition to Davis, six other all-stars sat out at least one game in the playoffs: the Boston Celtics’ Jaylen Brown; the Brooklyn Nets’ James Harden and Kyrie Irving; the Philadelphia 76ers’ Joel Embiid; and the Utah Jazz’s Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley.
Then came Wednesday’s news on Leonard, not to mention another stunner: Suns all-star Chris Paul is out indefinitely after entering the NBA’s covid-19 health and safety protocols. Depending on the severity of his knee injury, Leonard might not be able to return at all in the postseason, which could doom his Clippers’ chances of joining the Suns in the Western Conference finals.
James, who tweeted an expletive in response to an ankle injury suffered by Irving, offered more expansive commentary on Wednesday.
“This is the best time of the year for our league and fans but missing a ton of our fav players. It’s insane,” he wrote. “If there’s one person that know about the body and how it works all year round it’s ME!
“I speak for the health of all our players and I hate to see this many injuries this time of the year. Sorry fans wish you guys were seeing all your fav guys right now.”
In response to those comments, an NBA spokesman said in a statement: “Injury rates were virtually the same this season as they were during 2019-20 while starter-level and All-Star players missed games due to injury at similar rates as the last three seasons.”
“While injuries are an unfortunate reality of our game,” added spokesman Mike Bass, “we recognize the enormous sacrifices NBA players and teams have made to play through this pandemic.”
