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> As injuries and rest days mount across the league, new research shows that NBA stars play about 76% of their games, down from 86% in late 90s and 84% in the 2000s.
Haberstroh, when asked what was considered an “NBA star,” in his research:
> All-NBA or All-Star in previous season. About 25-30 players every year.
by lopea182
20 Comments
Fun fact:
There’s not a single player in the NBA under the age of 33 who has a 2200 point season which equals 26.83 PPG over a span of 82 games
The only active players who have one are James Harden, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Russel Westbrook and LeBron James.
That’s a reason why I rate James Harden more highly than I did just a few years ago. He has 4 top 100 all-time scoring seasons when you count total points. He and Kobe Bryant are the only players since Michael Jordan to have a top10 season.
90’s players just built different. and they didn’t have all the modern technology, medicine and recovery methods either
What would be interesting to see is the length of the career for said players. It seems to me that, unlike in the past, more star players are productive into their late 30’s. If that’s the case, that’s a reasonable tradeoff to make, less games per year, but longer career.
Basketball has to get Baseball’s PR. No baseball fan blinks an eye about their irrelevant too long regular season and/or players taking a routine meaningless game off.
I guess it comes down to fans going to go see a baseball TEAM versus fans going to see a basketball PLAYER?
I’d like to see if traditional employment trended this way too; I’m betting there’s an overall trend towards less hours at work which makes this even more interesting.
Not calling today’s league soft because everybody is much bigger stronger and faster but it seems like guys today sit for the kinds of bumps and bruises that wouldn’t have kept them out 20-30 years ago. Like a little bit of soreness wouldn’t have kept anybody out.
As “Thinking Basketball” points out, NBA players have to run/move a lot more than they did in the 80s 90s and even early 2000.
An increase in effort, movement, spacing and specialization are some factors to why modern players exert more energy while playing less minutes.
Great, now do the same thing with average career length
well yeah. only playing 3/4 games does seem kind of wild. I cant imagine missing 1 out of every 4 days of work
Living the basketball life more important nowadays.
I think 2021-22 on this chart is a pretty unique year for this and is having a relatively severe impact on the trend. There’s a difference between players resting, and players playing through a pandemic with mandated 10 day breaks away from the team when they’re sick which happened fairly frequently. How many star players that season *didn’t* get Covid? A significant amount of the league just had 3-5 games sat because of protocols.
There’s more wear and tear on the minutes the players are playing today. I won’t lie it kills the product though, that Lakers suns game the other day was unwatchable.
Pussies!
Jk, the Spurs started this trend so I can’t really talk shit about it lol
Need to make a standard 80% games played threshold in order to get your full salary. Below that and salary should automatically decrease by 20%.
Not on a Thibs coached team though.
76% sounds like such a low number. You’re telling me if I buy a ticket there’s a 1/4 chance the stars gonna be sitting
at this point is just unfair and wrong to compare star regular season numbers from different eras
Are injuries actually mounting?
I wonder how this compares with NHL and MLB. It’s reasonable to expect players to take rest days, even though it is tough for fans.
On one hand, this sucks for fans. Especially ones at the games.
On the other, look how many old players played through injuries and their body is still messed up even years into retirement.
Shorten the season.