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By Kirk GoldsberryMay 14, 3:19 pm UTC • 11 min
An increasing number of players are missing a growing share of games with soft-tissue leg injuries. Why is this happening? And what can the league do about it?
An increasing number of players are missing a growing share of games with soft-tissue leg injuries. Why is this happening? And what can the league do about it?
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Two moments. Sixteen months apart. Same player. And a giant new red flag for the NBA.<br>It’s Christmas in Dallas in 2024, and the hometown Mavericks are facing the Timberwolves in a massive showcase on national TV. Late in the second quarter, Luka Doncic catches the ball on the left wing, attacks the elbow, splits his stance wide for the stepback, and, at the instant he usually gathers and rises, aborts. Instead of his patented shot, he throws a flat, listless pass to Kyrie Irving at the logo. Doncic doubles over on the wing, with both hands on his left calf. He wouldn’t play another game in a Mavericks uniform. Six weeks later, he’s traded to the Lakers, and the explanation the front office gives the public is clear: They don’t trust his body.<br>The second moment is on April 2, 2026, in Oklahoma City. Doncic again finds himself on the left wing, again attacking the left elbow, and again he comes up hobbling. This time he grabs his left hamstring. It’s a Grade 2 partial tear.
The calf strain on Christmas ended his time in Dallas. The hamstring tear ended his first full season in L.A. Doncic missed the final five games of the regular season and the entire Lakers playoff run. That is the story. And the story is not unique to him. Consider the rash of other injuries so far in the 2026 playoffs:<br>Jalen Williams missed all but two of the Thunder’s eight playoff games due to a hamstring strain.<br>Aaron Gordon missed most of the Nuggets’ first-round series with a calf strain.<br>Peyton Watson missed all of the Nuggets’ first-round series with a hamstring strain.<br>Franz Wagner missed the final three games of Orlando’s first-round loss to Detroit due to a calf strain.<br>Ayo Dosunmu missed two games with calf soreness.<br>Donte DiVincenzo has missed all but three postseason games after rupturing his Achilles.<br>Anthony Edwards missed two games with a knee injury and has been limited since his return.<br>Jayson Tatum missed Boston’s Game 7 loss to Philadelphia in the first round due to “left knee stiffness,” but he was seen with an ice pack on his left calf, and reporters on the scene described the injury as a calf issue.<br>OG Anunoby missed the final two games of the Knicks’ second-round series against the 76ers with a hamstring strain.<br>This postseason is turning into a war of attrition, with soft-tissue leg injuries in particular playing an outsize role. And it doesn’t just seem that way; the data supports it. The league has been trending this way for years. In 2010-11, there were 18 documented calf injuries across the entire season. Last season, there were 60. This season, 86.
I collected the data in the graph above with the help of Michael Rees, a student researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. We spent the past several weeks tracking down historical NBA injury data, stitching it together, and cleaning it up so that we could study it. The resulting dataset includes more than 13,000 injuries and over 1,500 players, spanning 16 NBA seasons and all 30 teams.<br>Public injury data is notoriously messy. Reporting guidelines have shifted over the years, the information we have about individual injuries is often vague or inconsistent, and teams may be more cautious with treating soft-tissue injuries than they were in the past.<br>But the trends in this dataset are loud enough to cut through the noise and reveal a signal that is unmistakable and important: The NBA is in the midst of a leg plague, and a growing number of players are missing a growing number of games with lower-body soft-tissue injuries.
These soft-tissue injuries are dangerous for players, disappointing for fans, and destructive for the league. So why are they occurring so often? And what, if anything, can be done about them?<br>The first clue occurred to me several years ago in a conference room at the Warriors practice facility in San Francisco, during a technical discussion about biomechanics and basketball. At the time, Klay Thompson was still rehabbing from a brutal one-two punch of traumatic lower-body injuries that upended his prime and likely shortened the team’s dynasty. When our meeting wrapped up and the room fell into that unique silence that signals that a group is ready to disperse, Ron Adams, the longtime assistant coach and elder...