With the playoffs underway, Suns’ Devin Booker will reportedly be out for 2-3 weeks. Image: Getty Images
Damn NBA playoff injury mistake. Why do you spoil a glorious performance with your hideous presence and pathetic sting?
I’ll back out before I actually get this Shakespearean monologue going, but it’s quite disappointing that these NBA playoffs are riddled with injuries less than a week into the first round. At the start of the first game on Saturday, the playoffs began without Robert “Time Lord” Williams, Ben Simmons and Luka Dončić. With the Boston Celtics having the clear upper hand at the Brooklyn Nets and the Dallas Mavericks winning without their star and ending their streak 1-1, it looks like those players could return to court injuries only had in the NBA playoffs minimal damage dealt.
Then came Tuesday and Wednesday, and in the late game key players went under for serious championship contenders. On Tuesday night, Devin Booker was injured in the 125-117 loss of the 1st-seeded Phoenix Suns to the 8th-seeded New Orleans Pelicans. Today ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reported that Booker could miss 2-3 weeks of action. On Wednesday, the No. 3-seeded Milwaukee Bucks not only lost 114-110 to the No. 6-seeded Chicago Bulls, but also lost their second-best player, Khris Middleton, to an MCL sprain.
The Suns should still be able to get past the Pelicans, provided Chris Paul and the rest of the team avoid first-round injuries. However, the Bucks are their all-star scorer and one of the long, lanky players that make this defense so wild. They face a battle against the Bulls, who have two long all-star perimeter players capable of fielding huge numbers.
Even if last year’s conference champions make it through the first round, they could both face teams whose health will improve while theirs is declining. Williams could be back in the second round if the Celtics win and if the Nets recover from a 2-0 deficit Simmons will likely be able to play. If the Mavericks get Dončić back soon, they will win, and if not, the shorthanded Suns will have to face the Jazz in the second round, with Rudy Gobert, Donovan Mitchell and Mike Conley Jr. healthy.
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Year after year, we just can’t get teams into the NBA playoffs at full capacity. Earlier this season, Kawhi Leonard and Jamal Murray rehabilitated their ACL tears from last year. Then, for the Nuggets, one of their worst fears came true when Michael Porter Jr. required a third back surgery after signing him for a Max rookie extension. That left the Los Angeles Clippers out of the playoffs, and Nikola Jokić’s historic statistical season may have been swept out of the playoffs by the Golden State Warriors, who are starting to get healthier.
For the past three seasons, it’s been the Warriors who have borne the brunt of the injury spells dating back to Kevin Durant in the second round of the 2018 playoffs. Last season, the Los Angeles Lakers spent the year hovering around the No. 2, and injuries to LeBron James and Anthony Davis left them with play-ins and a first-round series against the team that would eventually become the No. 2. 2 seeds, the suns. James wasn’t at full strength, Davis went down, Paul would go down and then struggle through injury to return as the Suns grabbed a six-game win in a series that would have a great second-round matchup should be.
The Nets lost Harden and Irving damn close to tipoff of their much-anticipated second-round series against the Bucks last year. The Bucks won and would face the Atlanta Hawks in the most anti-climatic Eastern Conference Finals ever after Giannis Antetokounmpo and Trae Young both missed the final two games of that series.
Can basketball fans take a break? We’re plodding through this regular season of stress management and too many Lakers and Knicks games on national TV for the playoffs to progress to which team can brace themselves with popsicles and Elmer’s Glue long enough to get through the two months . 400 meter dash for the title.
I know injuries and other odd circumstances happen every postseason, Tom Haberstroh wrote in 2020 about how every NBA champion should be asterisked, though some of his points were in jest. But the last two seasons have been just dreadful with the Stars regularly going under as there is now a chance of a semi-final between the Suns and Jazz due to an injury to Dončić in the last game of the regular season and it will be played without Booker.
Perhaps the top three players on each team should be placed in hyperbaric chambers when they travel from now on. Something must be done. All modern science and stress management is available and we as a society cannot keep NBA players on the court from April to June. It’s so sad, almost as sad as getting a commission from Shakespeare at 15.