If it feels to you like more guys are missing games due to injuries this season, you are right.
But don’t confuse that with there being more injuries, and don’t blame the injuries on the lockout.
NBA Commissioner David Stern was asked about injures this season at his Saturday press conference and he has looked at the data the league has tracked.
“I must say, I’ve looked at it recently, and I would say that the number of injuries, as we get it from the reports of the trainers and the discussion with the doctors, is about the same as the same period last year,” Stern said. “The number of games lost is up slightly because teams are being smarter in their own ways, and competitively, by perhaps keeping a player out of a game that might have been an off day in past years.”
Basically, when your guy rolls an ankle and is out a week, he used to miss two or three games, but with the condensed schedule he misses four or five. The injury didn’t change, the time to heal didn’t change, only the schedule did.
We told you this before the season — the lockout did not increase injuries in the NFL, it was just a convenient excuse. Same here. There are not more injuries, guys are just missing more games.