Posa

NBA BASKETBALL: 82 games per season 48 minutes per game The argument that NBA injuries are surging because today's players are so much more athletic and the game is so much faster that their bodies can't handle modern basketball makes very little sense to me. Look at the numbers: - NBA pace: 103.1 possessions per 48 minutes in 1980 vs. 98.8 in 2024–25. The game was actually played faster 45 years ago. - Average player weight: Roughly 204 lbs in 1980, 214 in 1996, and 216 today. The biggest increases happened decades ago. - Average height: Already around 6'7" by the 1980s. Virtually unchanged today. -Combine performance: A study comparing the 2001 and 2018 NBA combines found players performed significantly worse on the 185 lb bench press, with no significant improvement in standing vertical jump. -Games missed by stars: 10.4 per season in the 1980s, 10.6 in the 1990s, and 23.9 in the 2020s. Roughly a 130% increase since the 1980s, including non-injury absences. -Load management: A 2026 study found no statistically significant reduction in subsequent injury risk among players who sat games for rest. -Modern movement: Yes, more spacing and switching can mean more sprinting, cutting and changing direction. But NBA player-tracking data only goes back to 2013–14. There's no comparable evidence proving today's players endure greater physical demands than those in the 80s and 90s. And conveniently overlooked is the significant physicality of those eras—hand-checking, hard fouls, constant contact and the cumulative toll that style of basketball took on players' bodies. None of that is adequately captured in these comparisons. The evolution in size, strength and athleticism from the 70s through the 90s was arguably much greater than anything we've seen over the last 25 years. I don't dispute that the game has changed. I dispute the assumption that those changes have somehow made an 82-game season with 48-minute games physically unsustainable. Where's the actual evidence? Maybe we should be questioning year-round specialization, training methods and whether we're actually developing more durable athletes instead of automatically blaming the game. And shortening games or reducing the 82-game season? I think that's a cop-out. I'm all for smarter training and recovery, but toughness, conditioning and durability are athletic attributes too. Keep approaching this with a soft mindset and we'll just keep softening the sport. At some point, the answer isn't to lower the standard. It's to get better at meeting it.