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How this season has gone: New Orleans averages 99.7 points per game as a team, but is missing 103.6 points from injured guys #advancedstats
— Jim Eichenhofer (@Jim_Eichenhofer) April 12, 2014
w/ Evans and Roberts going down tonight... that makes our top 7 scorers on the season now injured (let's see if either can play the final 3 games)
just keep a MASH tent near the Pels bench... so many freaking injuries
"The pelican is fearsome. Take a raven, for example: it's omnivorous. It eats bugs, and seeds, and fruit, and carrion. Compared to the well-rounded citizen that is the raven, the pelican is the serial killer of birds." - Barry Petchesky, Deadspin
Have we ever been THIS unlucky with injuries? Goodness me
All these injuries just can't be a coincidence. Whatever this team is doing medically and for strength and conditioning needs to be evaluated from top to bottom. If they go into next season with the status quo, I'm afraid we'll see a lot of the same thing, maybe not to the same degree, but it'll be déjÃ** vu all over again.
I was going to say something similar, sadly. This medical staff has to play some part of this I mean we basically don't even a team right now lol We are watching our backups audition for minutes in the future.Originally Posted by Tomdda
R.I.P. to HunnyB/FlyGirl
Roster spots 1 through 7 are not going to play the rest of the year.... WTH is going on.
1. AD
2. Holliday
3. Tyreke
4. Anderson
5. Smith
6. Roberts
7. Gordon
I guess we will either see Rivers play all 48 minutes or Miller at PG again. lol
let's go pillage the suns staff please
I honestly don't see how Ryno getting leveled before the inbound pass, AS having growing pains, Gordon having no knees, Roberts hyper extending his knee, Tyreke banging his knee, Smith having a pattern of injuries, and Jrue not telling anyone about his injury until after the pain got terrible (potentially causing avoidable damage) is on the team.
I haven't really heard people calling out the Lakers medical staff and they've had a pretty bad injury bug this year too. Yes it sucks, but I don't see a ton the medical staff could have done with these injuries.
Maybe Gordon by resting him but we were trying to show he could stay healthy.
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In b4 Suns Medical Staff is brought up
Nm, kurgan already did it
As we have discussed before, I think some people are confusing advocates saying "improvements can be made" with "If we change the staff, everything can be magically fixed"
For instance, here was a great piece on what some teams are doing for injury prevention, which those teams feel is the next analytic wave.
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story...aining-methods
Notice I said "some teams" because only ten are doing it so far, and no we are not one.
If you are not doing everything you can in this area, then yes, you can improve. Freak injuries will always happen, but there are ways to prevent injuries. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on injury prevention every year. It is not hocus pocus.
@mcnamara247
Gotcha
I remember reading this not to long ago and thinking this is the kind of thing teams need to be jumping on.
I also remember reading something years ago about a Dr. who went to the Blazers to help them with injuries and he said he could help them and was turned away by the franchise.
Like you said "freak" injuries often times only seem like random things. It's really just a lack of proper knowledge how to prevent said injuries from happening. I think one of the biggest problems in the medical field not just sports medicine is Dr. get caught up into what is the norm and for various reasons don't look into alternative treatments.
I agree with this. Anything you can do to improve even 1 or 2% as a sports team is worth it if you are trying to build a winning franchise. It's the same thing Mark Cuban did when he researched how to swing the balloons behind the goal to best cause opponents to miss the free throw.
Medicine is an area I think is constantly advancing and there's always new ways of improving treatment. We've seen guys like AP come back from an acl year in less than a year and nearly break the rushing record. It's honestly probably one of the last big areas you can advance in with sports. Sweat wicking technology can only take you so far in basketball.
However I do not have the view of some that there's something horribly wrong with our medical staff. And we need to top down replace them. Can they improve? Absolutely. There was a time vitamins were seen as hocus pocus. I'm all far bringing in alternative doctors to give different opinions to best help our players.
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Benson is likely most interested in the team as a financial investment that he gets to have fun with. The goal is to ensure the team is financially viable. Above all things the best way to do that would be to put butts in seats and the best way to do that is to win.
So where should he put his resources in to ensure our best chance of winning? Free agency, player improvement, and health. With improvement in those three areas I think we'd all agree we're a playoff team.
Player development seems sound. As much as the scrutiny of Monty has increased recently I think we still as a whole view him as a good coach for development with the exception of giving playing time to players like Roberts and Stiemsma over players like Rivers and Withey. In Zach Lowe's article he talked about how we brought in maybe the best shooting coach in the league. We are a young team with a ton of talent and potential improving our cohesion. We seem to be doing pretty well in regards to our future development skill-wise.
Free agency is fairly obvious. We can increase the level of talent we can be a better team. Although I don't think we need any 1A type players I think players like Sefelosha, Webster (not a free agent, I know but a possible trade target), Tucker, and Ariza fit the bill at SF and for a center ideally we would get a defensive big who can rebound and be okay playing 20 minutes a game (and for Monty to not decide that he needs to play 40 minutes a game). This may be a little tricky to do and will test Benson's commitment and Dell's skill.
But our training staff from conditioning to strength training seems suspect. I think we vitally need to look into improving it. To illustrate my point let's do an exorcise. Think back to the start of the season.
What would you put the odds at of Jrue missing 48 games from what we knew about him at the start of the season?
Anderson missing 60 games?
Evans missing 12?
AD missing 15?
Gordon missing 18?
Smith missing 51?
Seriously. Write down the percentage that you would give to each one of them missing. Obviously everyone's numbers will be different but I would say:
Jrue - 10%
Anderson - 10%
Evans - 33%
AD - 40%
Gordon - 90%
Smith - 50%
Multiply the percentages as decimals and that's the percentage that all those would happen this year (let alone concurrently). So mine would be .05% chance of those all occurring. Of course that doesn't take into effect the health of the other players who succeeded or surpassed what we would think is their expected health but the point still exists.
Now go through all the past seasons and do the same thing.
Of course there are freak accidents and some of those games missed were due to sickness or the staff being cautious. No conditioning makes Ryno not kick a chair and break his toe. There is probably nothing that will make Gordon or Smith not injury prone. But I'll say this. How many other players in the league didn't tell their coach they were banged up? Probably a few. How many plays happen that are even more physical that what Wallace did to Ryno?
The problem is that our team has historically been less healthy than other teams. It's hard to quantify the number, severity, and "freakness" of the injuries we've had throughout the years but at some point you recognize a common denominator that is affecting the health of our team and the role of the staff is exactly to prevent those things from happening. Maybe we've been unlucky and every season we're rolling a 100 sided dice and hitting 100 each time but I think at the very least the personnel/methods currently used should be questioned.
TL;DR If I'm Benson I make health the main focus to ensure the security of my financial investment.
.......if healthy
@Jabberwalker
What training staff in the world could have saved Jrue, Evans, or Ryno? Jrue tried to play through it and didn't tell anyone until the pain got too bad. Ryno got whiplashed while waiting for an inbound pass. Tyreke stepped on another players foot TWICE and rolled his ankle and then banged the heck out of his knee.
Even if you blame all the rest of the injuries on the staff, you can't say that they're suspect and use the above three as examples. They could have been on the mythical Suns training staff and it wouldn't have changed anything.
Gordon played the 2nd most games of his entire career this year. Tyreke played the 2nd most games of his career this year. AD played more games this year than last, while still being held out for precaution. How have about Austin Rivers who was injured last year. More games this year played. Why does the medical staff get no credit for that?
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Last edited by Mythrol; 04-12-2014 at 05:08 PM.
The problem here is you seem to be missing the point of what may really lead to injuries. Injuries as new data is collected looks like they're directly related to fatigue and conditioning(or a lack there of) so what a lot of times looks like a "freak" injury really is the result of a body that's not ready to handle the contact for various reasons.
Of course there's some form of freak injuries that will still take place. However IMO it's unwise to ignore new data that may play a huge role in reducing injuries. Medical staffs should be on the cutting edge of technology. Yet whenever I read an article about new tech the Hornets/Pelicans is never a team on any of the list of teams trying out new things.
Advanced analytical medical data would have made Jrue speak up and tell the medical staff he was having pain instead of hiding it and trying to play through it? Advanced analytical medical data would have caused Ryno's head to not whiplash while he was waiting for an inbound pass? Advanced analytical data would have stopped Tyreke from stepping on another players foot twice - rolling his ankle - and not bang his knee while playing?
I think you are missing my point.
I'm all far getting every available advantage possible for our team, including using medical data to try and determine wear and tear on their body. I am not however with the bandwagon fans trying to blame the above injuries on the medical staff. No matter what team Jrue, Ryno, and Reke were on these injuries would not have been prevented. I'm also not with the bandwagon saying all of our injuries fall on the medical staff and yet they ignore how other players have played more games this year than ever before or the 2nd highest of their career.
Our medical staff can always improve and I'd love nothing more than they used advanced data. But this belief that cleaning house would have prevented the majority of our injuries this year I think is completely wrong.
The 2006-2007 Hornets dealt with a ton of injuries but was still closer to making the playoffs compared to this team.
Emeka Okafor - Joe Smith - Carmelo Anthony - Manu Ginobili - Jason Williams
Al Jefferson - James Posey - Aaron McKie - Shaun Livingston
2006-2007 team injury situation was no were near what this team is dealing with.
Yeah, that year Peja basically missed the whole season (so, him and Ryno cancel each other out)
West missed 30, Paul missed 18, Chandler missed 9
Compared to:
Holiday missed 48, Davis missed 15, Smith missed 51, Gordon 18, and 10 so far for Tyreke. Not to mention all the games where these guys played but didn't play much like AD's 4 minute game.
The problem is that outside of Ryno and AD, the other guys who were injured were playing average at best all season with Gordon below average compared to how good West and Chandler were performing that season.
Not when they were playing together. When the five were together (or even the 4 w/o Gordon), they played great. They just didn't play together. Roles weren't clear because a different guy was out every night.
But, when on the court together, everyone in the Core Four played well. Admittedly, Davis was a little held back, but I think it would have evened out as the season went on. They were just learning to play together.
Ugh, this is so frustrating to talk about and speculate on. I can't wait to see this team relatively healthy for a sustained period of time
Who can say if some additional strength in Ryan's neck could have prevented that collision from turning into a surgical repair? Could a respected medical staff have limited AD's minutes to avoid his back spasms? Could Holliday have been handled differently to avoid the injury?
I work in the safety arena, and while there are definitely bouts of bad luck that occur, there are almost always layers of prevention that were lacking that contributed to the problem. "Freak" accidents are almost always combination of hidden gaps and improbable but foreseeable events. Ryan getting hit in the back is not very improbable, but his body's reaction to that collision may have been something preventable. Or, it may not. Hindsight should not be used to assign blame, but to look for ways to prevent the next similar accident. I'm sure Peyton Manning is doing things differently post-surgery to minimize his chance for a neck injury, and I hope our MASH unit is learning how to protect their bodies.
For me, the bottom line is that spending in the arena of injury prevention does not count against any salary cap. Our fan perspective tells us that there are better staffs and better programs of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment out there. If the team is confident that we have the best available at any price, it would be great to spend some time and effort convincing the fan base of that. If not, upgrades should be made and be publicized so that when they are successful we can use that as a selling point to free agents. The prior regime had a reputation for stinginess in areas other than player salaries. The Saints have not been without their problems on the injury front, so it is hard to say how the new regime compares to other NBA and NFL teams in this area. It would certainly seem to be a point where synergy could be found between the two teams.
Last edited by NOEngineer; 04-13-2014 at 04:47 AM.
This is what I was trying to explain to Mythrol. There's data that suggest injuries aren't as random as we originally thought they were. The point is that our medicinal staff should be looking into any tech that may cut down on injuries. The fact that we aren't is a problem in itself IMO.
Great post
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