NBA Midseason Report: As Injuries Mount, Some Contenders Feel The Pain

There are many things that will decide how far the handful of championship contenders will go in their quest for June gold. Defense, ball movement, chemistry, roster depth, and injuries.

The injury bug has crawled its way back into each conference playoff race, and though it cannot suit up and compete for a Larry O'Brien trophy, it may prevent some teams from grasping the league's top prize.

Late in the third quarter of the New Orleans Hornets' home game against the Portland Trail Blazers Tuesday night, Chris Paul, all 6-feet, 175 pounds of him, fell to the floor in a heap of wreckage.

The fans at New Orleans Arena and those Hornets faithful watching the telecast had to gasp, "Oh no! Fresh off two straight losses, the last thing we need is CP3 out for the season!"

Luckily his diagnosis, as reported by the Times-Picayune, is a groin injury that will likely keep him out of only one game.

Phew!

Hornets fans can stop with the doom-and-gloom, woe-is-me talk for the moment. Still, Paul's scare was a harsh reminder of how one injury can smash a team's fortunes and how roster health will play a bigger role than ever in conference races that will be decided by only a few games.

Here's a look at how various injuries will impact teams in the title hunt in the West and East.

NEW ORLEANS HORNETS

Player: Chris Paul

Injury: Mild groin strain

Expected to miss: The Times-Picayune says Chris Paul will likely sit out Wednesday's contest at home against the Chicago Bulls. He is listed as day-to-day.

Impact: Sometimes, numbers do tell an adequate story. The Hornets led the Blazers by as many as 20 points in the third quarter before Paul reported his groin strain to coach Byron Scott. The Blazers took advantage of Paul's absence, outscoring the Hornets 42-17 the rest of the way to win 97-89.

Translation: Without Paul, this team is screwed. Here is one poster's take on the situation at http://blog.nola.com/hornetsbeat/2009/02/new_orleans_hornets_chris_paul_10.html.

"Depending on how this heals and how many games Paul misses, I kind of wish he'd skip the All-Star game. There isn't a team in the league more dependent on one player than we are."--nolalifer

Doesn't that say it all? No team is more reliant on the brilliance of one player than the Hornets. Tim Duncan plays with two explosive all-stars who can create shots, Dwight Howard is surrounded by lethal three-point threats, and Kobe Bryant leads the league's most-talented team.

When Paul left Tuesday's game, the Hornets' offense crashed and the defense also sputtered. The worst of it? It was rookie Jerryd Bayless and the bench, not All-Star Brandon Roy (2-10 on the night,) who torched the Hornets in the final frame.

Paul defends and creates at least 50 percent of his team's offense, not including his scoring every night. The Hornets lucked out with this one. Still, with the Spurs already building on a four-game Southwest Division lead, Scott does not want his team resting on its laurels.

A four-game deficit is not insurmountable, but why tempt fate?

Player: Tyson Chandler

Injury: Sprained left ankle

Expected to miss: May sit out until after the All-Star game.

Impact: Oh yeah, this guy is also out. He sets back-breaking screens, gives Paul another weapon to use and teams with David West to seal off the lane. Chandler and West have underperformed and at times appeared disinterested in dominating the glass or defending, but Hilton Armstrong has shown in his new starting role that he's a lot worse.

The Hornets missed having another rim defender in Saturday's 106-93 loss to the Spurs.

Note: Morris Peterson is also out with a sprained ligament in his left foot.

ORLANDO MAGIC

Player: Jameer Nelson

Injury: Torn labrum in his right shoulder

Expected to miss: Several weeks without surgery, and rest of season with surgery

Impact: In a simple word, ouch. The Magic ventured out west in January as victims of a murderous road trip, but managed to slay three division leaders. The Magic swept the season series' with the Lakers and Spurs for the first time in franchise history, and then rebounded from a humbling home loss to the Celtics to thump the Cleveland Cavaliers at home last week.

The Cavaliers were minus starting center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, but a win over LeBron James' fiery and streaking team was impressive nonetheless. Nelson, not Dwight Howard, has been at the center of the Magic's 36-11 start, its best in franchise history.

With backup Anthony Johnson in a starting role, the Magic managed a 4-1 record with Nelson out earlier in the year. But there is no way Stan Van Gundy's bunch can continue this torrid pace without its All-Star point guard for a much longer stretch.

The Magic trailed three out of its four latest impressive wins at halftime (at LA Lakers, vs. Cleveland, and at Denver,) and Nelson was the guy who drilled the clutch shots to bring his club back. Against the Lakers, Nelson found enough ice in his veins to swoosh three treys in the final two minutes.

Since Howard is still a statistically poor foul shooter and relies more on his athleticism than his primitive offensive arsenal to score, Nelson has become the go-to guy. He had topped what Hedo Turkoglu did last year and set the Magic up with a realistic chance of emerging as the East's representative in the NBA Finals.

Now, a team over-reliant on its deadly three-point assassins will lose its most improved, clutch weapon for at least several weeks. If Nelson opts for surgery, which GM Otis Smith says he will need at some point, he will miss the rest of the season.

The Magic cannot replace what Nelson brings with a free agent, Johnson, Courtney Lee or J.J. Redick.

This may be the most unfortunate of all the injuries, as it may cost fans the chance to watch a player who was silencing his critics with a marvelous season. It will also cost the Magic any chance at a championship, much less an Eastern Conference Finals berth.

LOS ANGELES LAKERS

Player: Andrew Bynum

Injury: Right knee sprain

Expected to miss: 8-12 weeks, so at least the remainder of the regular season, as reported by the LA Times.

Impact: Bynum, 21, had been playing the best basketball of his career before he banged his right knee against Kobe Bryant against Memphis, averaging 26 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks in the five games prior to his injury.

Bynum's second-straight season-ending knee injury will sting the favored Lakers, without question. Much to the chagrin of everyone else in the Western Conference, it seemed in January like Bynum had finally mastered sharing the paint with fellow all-star Pau Gasol.

With two lengthy and multi-dimensional 7-footers, a number of dead-eye shooters and Bryant, how could anybody else win the west? With Bynum emerging as the talent everyone in Lakerland thought he would be, it seemed a foregone conclusion that seven other teams would be fighting for a chance to open the Western Conference Finals at the Staples Center.

Bynum's injury leaves the door ajar for the San Antonio Spurs, Houston Rockets and a few others to make a run at the top seed and the west crown, but Kobe Bryant is just the player for this predicament.

No team is better equipped to survive a major blow like this than the reigning Western Conference Champions. Had Memphis Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace not donated Pau Gasol to Mitch Kupchak, the Lakers would be in far worse trouble.

Without Bynum, the Boston Celtics will be favored if a rematch happens, and people will give the Spurs another shot with a healthy Manu Ginobili to turn the tables after last year's five-game ouster.

Kupchak has composed a roster packed with stunning talent. What the Lakers lack in defensive discipline, they make up for with a collection of scorers no one else in the NBA can match. Trevor Ariza, Bryant and Gasol headline a cast of players who can still win the west despite Bynum's absence, and who can count out savvy point guard Derek Fisher, who's been there and won that?

What the Bynum injury offers the foes trying to reach the Lakers level is a chance to exploit some obvious weaknesses. Gasol is a finesse forward, not a banger, Fisher has great trouble keeping any guard in front of him at his age, and their team defense has often allowed lesser squads to fire off scoring bonanzas.

Then there's Lamar Odom, or Not Scottie Pippen. Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson all but blamed this big-game moron for the home loss last week against the Charlotte Bobcats. They did not have to say the obvious.

Here's how LA Times columnist Bill Plaschke summarizes the questions surrounding his ability to play to his potential.

"Until we know about any of this, Lakers fans can only imitate the injured on-court reaction of the hero whose loss they are now mourning. You know, scream."

Still, if the Lakers have run away from their western challengers with a gaudy 38-9 record, despite massive defensive flaws at times, can't they figure it out again?

The Spurs think so.

“The Lakers were doing damn well without him,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich told the San Antonio Express-News Monday. “Somebody else will get the minutes, and they’ll continue to be tough. They’re still going to be the team to catch.”

HOUSTON ROCKETS

Players: Ron Artest, Tracy McGrady

Injuries: Ankle sprain for Artest, who knows this week for McGrady.

Expected to miss: Who the hell knows?

Impact: Trying to guess who will suit up for the Rockets from game-t- game this season is like trying to find Waldo at a red-striped shirts convention in the middle of the Amazon rainforest.

It is the joke that isn't funny. No team has dealt with more injuries than the Rockets, who with Artest's addition, were expected to challenge for conference supremacy.

We knew better, didn't we?

There is a difference between Carlos Boozer or Deron Williams missing significant chunks of the season in Utah, and not knowing if two out of three all-star caliber players will play less than two hours before tip-off in Houston. There is this thing called a game plan and Rick Adelman has thrown out more than a few after so many late McGrady and Artest scratches.

The Rockets have trotted out at least 16 different starting lineups, the most in the NBA, and lost more player games to injury than anyone else in the league. Knee this, groin that, shoulder of course, ankle sprain for certain.

At least when a key player is sidelined for weeks or months at a time, the timetable allows the coach to figure what he has and what it can do. GM Daryl Morey and Adelman have yet to see the complete roster they envisioned this summer play in consecutive games.

The Rockets have lost all three games in which every player was on the active roster, and it's not hard to see why. With so much lineup shuffling, enough to get Bo Diddly jiving in his grave, there has been little continuity and no way of knowing what to expect.

McGrady jammed his ankle in practice Friday and Artest continues to combat pain and inflammation in the knee he sprained in Oklahoma City in November.

The good news: With the toughest part of the schedule behind them, the Rockets have enough talent to survive the grind while McGrady and Artest rest for the playoffs.

The bad news: The all-star break is less than two weeks away and Adelman has no idea how to fit two incredible talents into his offense.

So, the Rockets can get to playoffs, and with a softer home schedule on the horizon, make a run at a top-four seed. But what the hell is this team going to do if it arrives to the postseason with no clue how to use two players who will make or break its title chances?

Isn't integrating two All-Star talents into the offensive and defensive schemes kind of important? Can a team win any playoff series if most of its role players have not yet meshed with those talents?

Can you learn that on the fly in April and May? What the Rockets cannot have is Artest camping behind the arc, heaving up contested three-point bombs, that for the most part, bomb. After a strong showing at the Palace of Auburn Hills in a 106-103 win, Artest reverted to his lost-puppy-in-a-slaughterhouse ways in a pratfall against the Knicks.

No team has dealt with more injury problems and no supposed contender has given away more games to lousy competition than the Rockets. That does not sound like a championship recipe to me.

UTAH JAZZ

Player: Carlos Boozer

Injury: Bum left knee, knee surgery

Expected to miss: 36 games missed already, might return after all-star break.

Player: Deron Williams

Injury: Bruised quad

Expected to miss: day-to-day

Player: Andrei Kirilenko

Injury: Bone fragments in right ankle, ankle surgery

Expected to miss: At least a month

Impact: Name a Jazz player who isn't out this week? It's like the verbal edition of pin the tail on the donkey, a crude guessing game.

Williams is one the league's premier point guards and has missed more than a month with nagging foot and quad ailments. Still, the Jazz rolled the much-improved Bobcats by 19 points at home with him in street clothes Saturday night.

With other reserves who can create offense, his absence hurts the Jazz a lot less in a regular-season game than Chris Paul's hurts the Hornets.

Boozer has averaged a steady 20 and 10 throughout most of his Utah tenure, but questions about his future there have been raised after Paul Millsap has played hero and put up similar numbers while he recuperates from ankle surgery. He rebounds at a nice clip and will give the Jazz a more refined offensive weapon when he returns after the All-Star break.

His defense, however, leaks more than the sinking Titanic because his effort on that end is often on par with his limited lateral quickness. He could be the spokesman for the Jazz's fatal flaw. They are physical with potent scoring prowess, but they can't keep anybody out of the lane or off the three-point line.

Kirilenko remains one of the league's elite defenders, but his shot-blocking and length alone didn't make the necessary difference the last two seasons. Kirilenko also gives them another facilitator who can execute the offense in crunch time.

During his time on the sidelines, the Jazz will surely be crunched by many teams ahead of it in the standings.

The Jazz's injury bout is similar to the Rockets only in the number of player games missed. While the Rockets brass has no idea what its team could do at with all the parts healthy, the Jazz's management should have learned long ago that this team, even at full blast, makes too little defensive noise to trumpet its way to the championship round.

CLEVELAND CAVALIERS

Player: Delonte West

Injury: Fractured wrist

Expected to miss: Could return before all-star break, projected to miss six weeks as of Jan. 17

Impact: The Cavaliers are as much about LeBron James as they are the terrific contributions from role players like West.

His injury might not carry the same consequences on any of the above teams, but with Cleveland, his scoring punch might have helped the Cavaliers overcome sluggish shooting in double-figure road losses to the Lakers and Magic. His return, coupled with that of Zydrunas Ilgauskas, will give Mike Brown a chance to see how serious a threat his team could be in the East as contenders brace for the stretch run.

A return to productivity soon for West won't change the Cavaliers season in the way Nelson's absence will destroy the Magic, but he is a solid boost.