6 NBA Players Who Are Officially 'Injury Prone' After 2014-15 Season
Move over, Derrick Rose. Make room, Rajon Rondo. Slide over, Anderson Varejao. Step aside, Dwyane Wade.
Thanks to the injury-inviting rigors of the NBA's regular season, y'all have company.
Injuries and subsequent absences are part and parcel of being an NBA player. Stuff happens. Bodies collide. Ankles twist. Knees buckle. Joints freeze. Bones break.
If you're lucky, you avoid it. If you're semi-lucky, you suffer only the occasional injury. If you're just plain unlucky in volume, you wind up on this list.
We all know the usual injury-prone suspects in Rose, Rondo and Wade, among others. On the heels of the 2014-15 regular season, though, there's a new crop of talent frequenting the sideline.
Absences from this season will feature prominently when identifying the injury bug's newest best friends, but past issues will factor in, as well. The goal is not to sound the death knell on careers here. These players are not necessarily missing 50-plus games every season and on the brink of becoming nobodies.
They're just being relegated to bystander duty more than anyone should.
Honorable Mention: Oklahoma City Thunder
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Fate really hates the Oklahoma City Thunder.
That or karma hails from Seattle and still resents the franchise for leaving.
Whatever the reason—sheer bad luck, perhaps—the Thunder are an injury-prone entity. No one star seems to spend too much time on the shelf, but their Thunderous Three isn't the durable force from two years ago.
Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka and Kevin Durant have each missed significant time at one point or another over the last two seasons, playoff pushes included. All three have sat out at least 15 games this season alone, and Westbrook even spent most of his campaign trying to offset the absence of Durant.
Consider this unbecoming picture: Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka logged around 2,178 minutes of total action together through the 2012-13 crusade. In the two seasons since, they've totaled a combined 1,828 minutes, including just 615 ticks this time around.
If this championship core is going to parlay its promise into an actual championship, all three stars need to be healthy at the same time. And with Durant speeding toward free agency in 2016, the Thunder better hope their collective health bill stabilizes long before then.
Anthony Davis, New Orleans Pelicans
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Sorry, folks, we have to go here.
Anthony Davis is everything anyone could have ever hoped for or dreamed up, and more. But despite keeping a summer home among the cosmos, he is not made of steel.
The 22-year-old has missed at least 14 games through each of his first three expeditions, amassing an unnerving total of 47 absences. While this doesn't sound like much, 47 games is nearly 20 percent of his entire career.
LeBron James, by comparison, has missed 57 games through 12 seasons. It seems unfair to compare Davis to a superhuman android like James, but that's the type of company he keeps these days.
Three campaigns into his career, Davis is already on pace to be an all-time great. He's cracking 30 on the player efficiency rating scale, one season before Michael Jordan (fourth) and three before James (sixth). Heck, Davis has more win shares (14) than James this season (10.4), despite appearing in fewer games and playing on a New Orleans Pelicans squad with eight fewer victories.
Nothing can stop him from lording over the NBA for years to come.
Except for injuries.
Although he doesn't suffer from any severe recurring ailments, Davis has missed time due to shoulder, ankle, knee, hand, finger, toe, groin, chest and back issues, among other things, since entering the league. Some of his sideline stays are no doubt precautionary measures, but the "why" doesn't matter here.
Davis has missed enough time for us to cross our fingers in hopes his fragile limbs don't impede a career for the ages.
Jrue Holiday, New Orleans Pelicans
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Poor Pelicans.
Jrue Holiday came to them in 2013 having missed 14 games through his first four seasons. He has 93 absences to his name over the last two, most of which are due to the same injury: a stress fracture in his right tibia that he initially suffered in January 2014.
Pushing 25, Holiday has youth and time on his side. But the Pelicans gave up future Defensive Player of the Year candidate Nerlens Noel to get him, attempting to expedite a rebuilding process that catered to Davis' rapid, all-world growth.
When both Davis and Holiday are healthy, that draft-day gamble pays off. New Orleans is outscoring opponents by 5.6 points per 100 possessions this season when these two share the floor. That would rank as the fourth-best net rating in the league, better than those of powerhouses, such as the Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers.
But Davis and Holiday are seldom healthy together. And the Pelicans are left to suffer as a result, clinging to fringe postseason contention, stranded somewhere between where they want to be and the lasting rebuild Holiday was supposed to help them avoid.
Dwight Howard, Houston Rockets
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Hey, no one said this would be an exercise in not getting sick to your stomach.
Dwight Howard used to typify invincibility. Used to. His health has been in flux since 2011-12, when he sustained a season-ending—not to mention cryptic—back injury. Since then, he's battled a portfolio of other issues, most notably those in his right knee, right shoulder and left ankle.
This season is admittedly an extreme example of that ebbing sturdiness; he's missed more games (41) than he did through his first 10 go-rounds combined (36). Still, this isn't happening randomly.
Various other red flags were planted long before now. After riding pine for just seven games in seven seasons, his 2011-12 injury woes started a downward trend that his time with the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets has only advanced. His explosion is still there, but it's in visible decline. He's different. Human.
"Dwight Howard is back from injury (bone marrow aspirate injection), but he's not returning to the same role he had before he went out," Bleacher Report's Kelly Scaletta wrote. "Now he's adjusting his game to accommodate the team, making him one of the most unique X-factors in this year's postseason."
Late-career trajectories are difficult to predict for big men. Injuries seem to hit them harder and linger longer. Howard might return to his durable, superstar self, or he may spend the rest of his days fending off injury bugs to jaded consequence.
Either way, he's still an imposing force on both ends of the floor. His placement here is not positing otherwise. It's just acknowledging Howard's foray into the latter part of his career—a process that's already underway and impossible to stop.
Joakim Noah, Chicago Bulls
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Joakim Noah could technically be exempt from this list, but not in the sense that he's healthy. He's not. Rather, he could fall into the Rose or Rondo category, as someone who is grandfathered into the next era of injury-prone studs.
But, Noah is old school. He plays through injuries when he can. He survived bouts with plantar fasciitis and knee problems in 2013-14, only to have arthroscopic surgery on his left knee that summer.
Ankle injuries, hamstring tweaks, eye abrasions, knee pain and general soreness dogged him throughout 2014-15, forcing him to miss 25 games. If not for the Chicago Bulls being deeper than in years past, there's a strong—possibly ironclad—chance he would have mustered at least 12-15 more appearances.
Compared to Rose, a sideline staple since 2011, Noah is fine. His absences don't span months or even weeks. He has missed just 35 games since 2011-12, and his longest stay on the bench peaked at five contests this season.
Yet, it's always something with him. He's forever playing hurt or trying to get healthy—even now, as the Bulls prepare for another playoff push.
"Just a little hamstring issue," Noah said before sitting out Chicago's final game of the season, per ESPN.com's Nick Friedell. "I just got to be careful. I'm doing all the treatment, getting myself as ready as possible."
Somewhat quietly, Noah has missed 15.2 percent (97) of all regular-season games since reaching the NBA. He's a net minus when on the floor this season, and his minutes are as low as they've been since 2009-10. Something clearly isn't right.
Now, more so than ever, this perpetual state of concern—once a steppingstone he effortlessly leapfrogged—is wielding its full power. If Noah wasn't injury-prone before, he is now.
Nikola Pekovic, Minnesota Timberwolves
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Nikola Pekovic's five-year deal isn't looking so hot right now.
Three years and $35.8 million remain on the Minnesota Timberwolves contract he signed in 2013, per Basketball Insiders, a pact that's quickly becoming the NBA's absolute worst.
Pekovic has missed 135 of a possible 394 regular-season tilts since entering the NBA. That's more than one-third of his entire career.
Foot and ankle injuries have been his downfall, with some groin, abdominal, quadricep, calf and wrist issues sprinkled in between. While the silver lining has always been his production when healthy, there is no bright side to look on anymore.
Struggling through a career-high 51 absences, Pekovic shot a career-worst 42.4 percent from the floor this season. As a post-inhabiting big man with slow feet, a mediocre rebounding rate and no shot-blocking chops, he's quickly devolving into an obsolete talent—especially with regard to the Timberwolves' future.
Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine, Gorgui Dieng, Ricky Rubio (more on him shortly) and Shabazz Muhammad are all fit for an uptempo play style, and head coach Flip Saunders has designed offensive schemes accordingly. The Timberwolves run with borderline top-10 pace and aren't about to slow down in the coming seasons.
Even if they wanted to implement a more half-court-oriented approach structured around Pekovic, they couldn't. He needs to, you know, actually play for that to happen.
Ricky Rubio, Minnesota Timberwolves
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Oh, Ricky.
Rubio's injury history has effectively put his evolution on hold. The Timberwolves are still waiting for him to develop a consistent jumper and become more than a steal-chaser on the defensive end. But Rubio needs to work on playing more before anything else.
Through his first four seasons, he has missed 110 of a possible 312 contests, or 35.3 percent of his career. Drafted ahead of Stephen Curry in 2009, Rubio is still trying to prove he's a legitimate franchise cornerstone at the league's deepest position.
Potential alone earned him a four-year, $55 million contract extension in October. His body has since rewarded the Timberwolves with 22 appearances and a call for arthroscopic surgery on his left ankle.
"I haven't been healthy, and I owe this team a lot," Rubio said, according to The Associated Press (per ESPN.com). "In four years, I have one good season, an 82-game season. I owe this team a lot."
That one 82-game season, in 2013-14, offered a glimpse into what Rubio can actually do. He shot just 35.6 percent from the floor, including 25.5 percent from deep, but he racked up a league-best 191 steals and made the Timberwolves offense 11.7 points per 100 possessions when on the floor.
Unlike Pekovic, he clearly has a future in Minnesota. Its inefficient offense was halfway decent with him on the floor this season, he worked well alongside Wiggins and his superior court vision is still a thing.
Standing in the way of that future, though, is a mounting list of injuries. From a torn left ACL to back spasms and the latest ankle surgery, Rubio is incurring a host of setbacks that, as of now, are threatening to dictate how his career will be defined.
*Unless otherwise cited, all stats are courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and accurate heading into games on April 14. Injury history comes from Pro Sports Transactions.
