Dave Feschuk: Why are so many NBA superstars dropping with injuries? Here’s one theory - Toronto Star

Saturday's NBA injury report listed 34 players out for a seven-game slate.

A gruesome leg injury to Jalen Williams was the first of three major blows to the Oklahoma City Thunder roster in October.

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk

In explaining an early NBA season marred by a depressing rash of high-profile injuries, there is little debate about the long list of contributing factors.

The prevailing style of high-paced play is beyond taxing. With massive salaries turning the pursuit of contracts into a year-round grind at younger and younger ages, overuse injuries among the high-mileage pros are seen by some as an inevitable byproduct. And with the 82-game schedule forever criticized as too long, it’s led to shorter training camps and load management. Stars sit out games and rarely practice. Teams and players prioritize rest and recovery over seemingly everything.

The problem? For all the money spent on sports science, the injuries stack up.

Which has led some to theorize: Is it possible NBA players, thought by many to be overburdened, are ultimately undertrained?

Count Tim Grover among those who subscribe to the hypothesis. The performance coach who made a name building up the bodies of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant made a case this past week that players aren’t doing the hard work required to bulletproof their muscles and tendons and ligaments to the rigours of the modern game.

“If you walk into some of these strength and conditioning sessions (in NBA facilities), all they’re missing is somebody to serve wine or a Starbucks barista,” Grover said in an interview on NBA radio. “It’s the most casual environment.”

"They're so worried about getting hurt in the offseason, they're getting hurt during the season" Longtime NBA Trainer Tim Grover talks to @talkhoops and @adaniels33 about what could be attributed to so many injuries across the league Full show below: https://t.co/SvrOaCZqlX https://t.co/GVxdDIc1QA

He said weight rooms have become short on the intensity that made his most famous clients great. Rather they’re a place where “people (get) together to tell stories.”

“How can you lift and train at an intense level and carry on a conversation with somebody?” Grover said. “You just can’t. You can get mad at me, but I’m telling you what I’ve seen.”

What’s beyond debate is that the constant deluge of bad injury news is a downer for fans.

The Raptors have already played three of their five games without the oft-injured Kawhi Leonard, who is expected to be out multiple weeks with swelling in his left knee. The 2025 champion Oklahoma City Thunder have already seen their title hopes diminished by a catastrophic leg injury to all-star forward Jalen Williams and a shoulder and knee injuries to teammates Cason Wallace and Chet Holmgren, respectively.

Even potentially triumphant returns have been trying. Tyrese Haliburton’s comeback from a season-long absence, recovering from a torn Achilles tendon suffered in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals with the Indiana Pacers, has already been waylaid by a hamstring strain that has him listed as week-to-week.

That sampling only scratches the surface of the hurt. On Saturday, the NBA’s pre-game injury report listed 34 players. Considering there were seven games on the slate and assuming 15 per roster, roughly 16 per cent of personnel were unavailable.

There are those who believe the solution is out of human hands.

“It’s all up to God,” Joel Embiid, Philadelphia’s availability challenged former MVP, was quoted as saying this past week in the Philadelphia Inquirer. “All we’ve got to do is pray.”

Among those posing Earthbound interventions, Grover isn’t the only voice who has suggested NBA players aren’t training sufficiently for the demands of their sport.

Marcus Elliott, the California-based doctor behind Peak Performance Project, which has trained the likes of Toronto’s Scottie Barnes, was profiled in Henry Abbott’s 2025 book “Ballistic: The New Science of Injury-Free Athletic Performance.” Abbott said in an interview last year that P3’s view is that NBA players are “overworked but undertrained.” In other words, preventing injuries isn’t about running suicides on the practice court. It’s about studying how an athlete’s body is working and identifying points of vulnerability. As the book points out, a P3 biomechanics study found that the top 15 factors contributing to knee injuries don’t reside in the knee. Hip and ankle function, or lack thereof, are often the culprits.

It’s not necessarily jumping that does the damage. It’s often landing. According to P3 data, one NBA player who jumped off an 18-inch box came down with the force measured at 11,000 newtons; a mere 3,000 newtons can sever a human spine. It’s safe to say poor landing technique is a health hazard.

Grover expressed a parallel opinion: While it’s common for players to work on honing speed, they don’t spend time on their stopping power.

“What does a game require now? It’s more sprinting, more cutting, more stopping, more changing of directions,” Grover said. “Everyone is teaching you to go, go, go, go. No one is teaching you how to stop.”

If players are all gas and no brakes, it’s no wonder they break. Grover said more attention needs to be paid to so-called deceleration training. He sounded skeptical, mind you, that many of today’s players would be interested in partaking in his workouts, which he suggested don’t allow for much socializing.

“People always ask me: How did M.J. do it? How did Kobe do it?” Grover told NBA radio. “I always tell them: Do you really want to know? Because if you really want to know, you ain’t going to like it.”

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Opinion articles are based on the author’s interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details

Dave Feschuk is a Toronto-based sports columnist for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dfeschuk