Brand injured

[Bob Green]

Bad news out of L.A., Elton Brand has ruptured his left Achilles Tendon (http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2960614)and will undergo surgery.

[Fish80]

That is bad news for Elton. What's the prognosis - ruptured sounds bad, is that the type of injury that takes a year of rehab?

[chrishoke]

The year of Duke injuries continues.

[jimsumner]

This is terrible, terrible news. A similar injury ended Gene Banks' career and seriously undermined Christian Laettner's career. This is an injury a basketball player absolutely does not want to have.

[phaedrus]

That is bad news for Elton. What's the prognosis - ruptured sounds bad, is that the type of injury that takes a year of rehab?

i think it's fair to say a ruptured achilles is in the same ballpark as a torn acl. a very tough break but not impossible to recover from.

[jipops]

Could we be looking at the real Duke curse? The ratio of NBA Dukies / serious injuries has to be something like 0.9 (I'm just guessing, I have no numbers). Sure tons of players are injured from time to time but you can pretty much count on a nba Dukie to have some kind of career altering injury at some point.

Seems just as bad these days if you're wearing the Blue Devil uniform.

Good news for Brand is that it may not keep him out the entire year, looking like 6 months according to reports.

[VaDukie]

Could we be looking at the real Duke curse? The ratio of NBA Dukies / serious injuries has to be something like 0.9 (I'm just guessing, I have no numbers). Sure tons of players are injured from time to time but you can pretty much count on a nba Dukie to have some kind of career altering injury at some point.

Seems just as bad these days if you're wearing the Blue Devil uniform.

Good news for Brand is that it may not keep him out the entire year, looking like 6 months according to reports.

Every time an arrogant UNC fan makes the Duke-UNC pros comparison, the first thing I have to bring up is Duke's injuries. For all his flaws, Laettner was an All-Star in 1997 and would have probably been one again if it weren't for injuries. Hill was a consensus top 10 player in the league before his injury - and the third leading scorer his final season in detroit at 26.8 ppg. J-Will would be an All-Star right now. I guarantee it. We see how good Chris Paul is now, but Jason was much more talented. Hurley could have been a poor man's Stockton if not for a truly tragic accident. And last year JJ was limited by a back injury, so he got labeled a bust by Duke haters - he will prove them wrong next year.

And so it comes with Brand. I guess it's just the way it is.

[_Gary]

Could we be looking at the real Duke curse?

As much as it pains me to say this - the answer has to be an unqualified "YES"! I mean, come on folks. This is just so ridiculous (the injuries to Dukies) it's beyond reason. I'm the last one to believe in literal "curses", but you can't deny that Dukies are getting injured - badly injured - at a greater rate than any other college to pro players. :(

Gary

[Oriole Way]

Have there been any other recent impact NBA players who've recovered successfully from the same onjury?

[hondoheel]

^Arvydas Sabonis ruptured both Achilles. Of course he went from jumping a good foot over David Robinson to barely being able to dunk at 7'3".

[throatybeard]

So why are Duke pros so injury-prone. Statistical noise...Some actual reason...Hypotheses?

[jimsumner]

"So why are Duke pros so injury-prone"

Random fluctuations of a cold and uncaring universe?

[bluedev_92]

Must be Global Warming...

[cspan37421]

I quesiton the premise that "but you can't deny that Dukies are getting injured - badly injured - at a greater rate than any other college to pro players". Unless someone has data for other schools, correcting for playing time, age, etc., I'd say that we're just talking appearances. Naturally we notice injury to the guys we follow more than injuries to others. My guess is that w/r/t tendencies toward injuries the casual NBA fan is only aware of Grant Hill being historically injury prone. JWill and Hurley - motor vehicle accidents aren't quite the same thing as being injury prone. I'd be surprised if anyone remembers an injury to Laettner or even Redick.

And statistically - well, you're talking a very small sample. I'd be very surprised if anything can be statistically inferred about whether Dukies are more injury prone than others.

[EarlJam]

Must be Global Warming...

It's totally George Bush's fault. D&mn this administration!

-EarlJam

[Indoor66]

I quesiton the premise that "but you can't deny that Dukies are getting injured - badly injured - at a greater rate than any other college to pro players". Unless someone has data for other schools, correcting for playing time, age, etc., I'd say that we're just talking appearances. Naturally we notice injury to the guys we follow more than injuries to others. My guess is that w/r/t tendencies toward injuries the casual NBA fan is only aware of Grant Hill being historically injury prone. JWill and Hurley - motor vehicle accidents aren't quite the same thing as being injury prone. I'd be surprised if anyone remembers an injury to Laettner or even Redick.

And statistically - well, you're talking a very small sample. I'd be very surprised if anything can be statistically inferred about whether Dukies are more injury prone than others.

I would further raise a point that the issue of injury is a player problem and is not associated with where they played college ball.

[mapei]

At best, it is horribly bad luck for players from one school, especially when you figure in the off-court accidents of Hurley and Williams. Tony & Wilbon were talking about it on PTI.

[jimsumner]

We certainly don't have the data base to support the claim that former Duke players are injured at a greater rate than the norm. But that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true.

Since Mike Krzyzewski took over, a list of former Duke players who either had career-ending injuries or injuries that severely impacted their NBA careers would include

Gene Banks
Johnny Dawkins
Mark Alarie
Christian Laettner
Bobby Hurley
Grant Hill
Roshown McLeod
Jason Williams
Shavlik Randolph

I'm leaving out guys like Brand (so far), Boozer, and Maggette, who seem to get hurt a lot but come back without having lost anything. I'm leaving out Ferry, who suffered a knee injury in Italy and Redick, whose injuries early last season had an impact that cannot yet be determined. I'm also leaving out pre-K guys like Art Heyman, Mike Lewis, and Tate Armstrong, who had significant injury problems.

I certainly don't think there's any Duke curse or something in the water or lousy conditioning programs or anything like that. Somebody's got to be above average, somebody's got to be below average, most are about average. So, maybe Duke just has the bad luck to have an above-average number of injuries. But there have been a lot.

[greybeard]

Seems to me that most sports minded people ask the wrong questions and look to the wrong places for answers.

The question in the off season invariably is, in one form or another, "What can I do to improve my game?" To the extent that it is improving what is most easily referred to as "athleticism," there are the usual array of suspects to go to for answers--trainers with different specialties (strength, agility, speed, flexibility, coaches to name a few, dieticians, etc. To the extent that the focus is also on skill sets, specialty coaches of all sorts to break down what comprises effective moves, etc.

But, if you are a prize athlete, it seems to me that there is another question that must be but is rarely asked. How do I improve my concepts about the game I play and the body I use to play it that will minimize the likelihood of serious injury. When that becomes the nature of the inquiry, the individual must take the onus of learning upon himself.

Learning to understand the use/improvement of body parts to maintain health, along with performance, must be part of an individual's personal ambition. Then comes the task of informing oneself on available educational resourses and making choices that can lead to learning.

If athletes continue to rely on trainers and coaches to set the agenda, their ability to make choices that are healthy ones will illude them. They will have only themselves to blame.

How an athlete can go to a University and not have learning about how they can improve their ability to chose what is good, what is safe, what is easy, in their bodies when there is so much out there that can lead to greater understanding is unstandable in these days. Universities do not in the main offer such courses because those who are expert are not PHDs, are not part of the educational system paradigm that we have developed, and generally are outside the ken of what is commonly understood as a sophisticated approach to sport.

It is also understandable that education in this fashion has been thought to be largely unnecessary because most athletes bring to the table an incredibility acute kinesthetic sense that permitted them to self teach in the first instance.

However, the time has come, it seems to me, for athletes to understand certain truths. First, they need to understand that as gifted as they are in self learning how their bodies' work, they are relative neophytes when it comes to dealing with the issues posed as they have made adaptations to deal with injuries (and I use that term in its broadest sense) that solved one problem but might have laid the seeds for any number of others. So, some organized system in examining the concepts around what comprises effective and healthy movement and its relationship to structure must keep up with their growth as specialized "performers."

Second, they need to understand that there are systematic methods of inquiry out there that can and should be part of their educations. They need to demand access to them.

I really think that there are no other options.

In the meantime, we need not hold our collective breaths until the world catches up with my perspectives.

Brand should have been asking himself, not just "how can I improve my game," in the off season, but "how can I improve the chances of my performing throughout the next system in a safe and effective manner." In other words, how can I refine what I do to remain effective but reduce risk and reduce wear and tear. How can I prepare my body/mind, my concepts about play, that will lead me to a healthy year.

If Brand remains healthy throughout a season, his team is much better off than if he improves his shooting percentage but loses significant time to injury. It is one thing for the genuises who own and run teams to miss this simple truth, but it is quite another for Brand himself to.

My belief happens to be that, in basketball in particular, offensive concepts can make a huge difference in the exposure of players to injury. Let me translate that. Offensive systems that depend on ball movement, minimize the dribble, and do not depend on fighting for postion, can be extremely entertaining to play and watch and will result in less injury. I am confident that similar things could be said of methods of defense.

Now, what would happen if statistics were kept, detailed ones like they do now with shot charts, etc, on injuries. Whether they occur on offense, defense, rebounding, etc, what type of injuries, what team they were playing against, was it the result of contact, etc. Keep statistics by team and league. Make them available to kids and their families through a clearing house. Let them have the information of which leagues/teams forster a safer environment within which to play.

If anybody is still reading, I'm done for now.

grey "injury in sport is the scandal of our time" beard

[mapei]

Very good points. I don't know if it's fair for us to assume that athletes aren't eductaing themselves about those things, but there is an undeniable tension between what you suggest (which I agree would benefit teams in the long run) and the excel-in-the-moment, do-extraordinary-things, play-through-the-injury aspect of our sports culture. How often have we heard coaches, teammates, media, and fans praise a player for "playing hurt" or criticized one for sitting out with what we preceive to be a marginal injury? Way too often IMO.