New on Sports Illustrated: NBA Playoff Injuries Don't Equal Asterisks: Unchecked

There is no asterisk or any one thing to blame for the injuries to stars this NBA playoffs.

Injuries have absolutely marred the NBA playoffs, there’s no getting around that. But that doesn’t mean this season should have an asterisk, nor is there any one thing to blame. It just sucks. 

A title is supposed to crown the best team, not the last one standing. And with Giannis Antetokounmpo going down, he joins the likes of LeBron James, Anthony Davis, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embiid, Chris Paul, Trae Young and Donovan Mitchell on the list of players who have been limited or taken out by injuries this postseason. That’s an Olympic team (and doesn’t even include guys who didn’t play at all because they were hurt before the playoffs started). 

When it comes to asterisk talk, I simply don’t believe in those, as circumstances help determine every champion. This isn't the first season where an injury has altered a playoff series.

As for as the number of injuries? Well, it’s common sense that a shortened offseason and condensed schedule could have contributed. And I personally wonder whether today’s style of play being so explosive with all the switching, closing out, and getting up and down the floor, is likely to result in more players getting hurt. Especially given how many games are played, which I do think needs to be addressed going forward. 

But when it comes to the turnaround for this year, the league, like everyone else, was dealing with something unprecedented and of course rushed the start for monetary reasons. However, that was not a unilateral decision as the NBA Player’s Association signed off on it. And some of these injuries—including what happened to LeBron, Kyrie, Trae and now Giannis seem much more like freak collisions to me. 

There’s a definition of blame that says it is a way to discharge pain and discomfort, but in this case, I don’t know if there’s any one thing to be blamed, even if seeing all these NBA stars getting injured hurts to watch.