Nba Pushes Back On Small Study Suggesting Spike In Workloads Before Nba Player Achilles Tears

It feels like the NBA doth protest too much.

There was a lot of talk about Achilles tears in the NBA a year ago after a season that saw a spike to seven of them, a few of them high-profile moments during the playoffs (most famously the Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, but also Boston's Jayson Tatum and Portland's Damian Lillard). There was a lot of speculation around what might have caused that spike (there were none the season before and just one last season, Donte DiVincenzo).

A study released last month in the Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine, conducted by doctors with the University of California, San Francisco, concluded that there was a correlation between a spike in workloads for veteran players 10-15 days before they tore their Achilles (hat tip Mike Vorkunov at The Athletic). From the study:

"Significant workload spikes were found in the 10 to 15 games preceding Achilles ruptures for NBA players. Veteran players carried heavier cumulative workloads, whereas younger players ruptured tendons under lighter use."

It's interesting, not definitive, but interesting. While this is small-sample-size theater, it kind of tracks logically: Older players are more prone to injury after an increase in usage.

The NBA pushed back on this. Here is a statement given to NBC Sports from Dr. John DiFiori, the NBA's Director of Sports Medicine:

"Over the past year, we have worked to better understand Achilles tendon injuries through a tendon health working group and additional research. While we welcome continued learnings, we believe the recent paper on this topic has important methodological limitations. Our own extensive review of league data to date, conducted with independent epidemiologists and consultants, spanned the 2012-13 season to the present and found no relationship between Achilles tendon injuries and minutes played before injury. We remain committed to advancing research that informs player health, performance, and injury prevention."

This kind of echoes something NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said a year ago, after the season with the spike (again, hat tip to Vorkunov at The Athletic).

"When we look back at the last 10 years, the majority of the Achilles injuries have happened before the All-Star break. So, it's not clear it's the number of games. And as you know, modern NBA players, even when they're not playing games sometimes in the summer they're working harder than they are during the season when they're playing three games a week."

The human mind seeks out simple, clear connections, even amongst what can be a complex web of reasons for something. This is a complex situation. There is no easy answer to how to reduce the number of Achilles injuries in the NBA and to avoid future spikes during the most visible time of the season. Any added information is good, not definitive.

But the NBA pushing back on this study, which had gained a little interest online but was not as hot a topic as where DeMar DeRozan might sign, felt like an overreaction.