It may seem like it, but lockout does not equal more injuries

You knew this would come — the talk around the league that the lockout and shortened training camps had led to more injuries, more sprained ankles and more traumatic injuries. anecdotal evidence seems to back that up. Al Horford is down for the season after surgery to repair his pectoral muscle Tuesday, a similar injury to what Kwame Brown suffered. Dwyane Wade, Derrick Rose and others are out, and Kobe Bryant should be but is too stubborn.

Here is what Rick Adelman told NBA.com.

“I just find it unusual that you see so many,” said Wolves coach Rick Adelman. “Maybe because the season is so compressed that you dwell on it quicker and more often, since you don’t have time to rest. But it just seems rash. Someone told me that between now and February (the Wolves) have two days off. That’s not a lot of time to rest or get healthy.”

Adelman is on to something — it’s not the lockout, but the compressed schedule makes it look worse than it is. More games in a tighter space makes the normal number of injuries per game appear increased, and when players do get hurt they miss more games while recovering than in the past.

Sports injury blogger and guru Will Carroll did a study on this for a team and

wrote for Sports Illustrated about it before the season.

Traumatic injuries are random in when they occur, but predictable in how often they occur, according to a proprietary study I did for an NBA team two years ago… The gist of the study is that certain events make a player more likely to be injured traumatically and that traumatic injuries predict chronic ones. Players have a greater chance of suffering a traumatic injury if they persist in doing certain athletic activities over a long period….

Which brings us back to the lockout and injuries. There’s simply no evidence that the lockout or even just a time away from the paternalistic embrace of a team increases the risk of injury.

Wade is out — this is a guy who attacks the rim aggressively and is reckless with his body in the process. It is part of what makes him great, but it does lead to injuries and we have seen that in his past. He rolled his ankle — that’s a common, every season occurences with players. Rose also attacks aggressively and puts his body at risk (although he draws less contact than Wade). Did you really think Rose was never going to suffer some injuries?

Big men having random injuries that cost them the season, we see that every year, too.

The difference this year is that because of the compressed schedule the injuries appear to happen more often. A player tweaks his ankle and might normally have a day or two off to rest it before he plays again, but now he tries to play through it during four games in six nights and the result is it gets worse. That’s not the fault of the lockout — that’s the fault of the NBA owners and players union trying to make as much money back this season as they could by compressing the schedule.