Keeping players healthy high on Adam Silver's list

Sam Amick | USA TODAY Sports

OAKLAND — Just one day before, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver had talked about the league's injury issue as if it were a thing of the past.

Sure, the Cleveland Cavaliers' Kevin Love (dislocated shoulder) and Anderson Varejao (Achilles tendon tear) were missing from the Finals. But the game's greatest stage was featuring a faceoff between some of its greatest players, and the record-breaking television ratings for Thursday's Game 1 seemed to be proof positive that all would be well from here until the end. And then, this.

The news of Kyrie Irving's season-ending knee injury slowly made its way through a sparkling facility in East Oakland on Saturday afternoon, when Silver and other league officials joined a group of Golden State Warriors coaches players who helped refurbish a Boys & Girls Club. It created quite the mix of emotions for those on hand, with dozens of children and their parents exuding so much joy at this meaningful event while the basketball people processed what it all meant. And Silver, again, found himself contemplating this matter that is demanding his attention more than ever before.

As dynamic and dominant as the Warriors have been, their inexplicable ability to stay healthy has had as much to do with their sensational season as anything else. In nearly every NBA venue not named Oracle Arena, the stars fell at a merciless rate. Kobe Bryant. Kevin Durant. Russell Westbrook. Derrick Rose. Pau Gasol. Anthony Davis. Al Horford. The list just kept growing and growing.

Silver, who seems so determined to find some solutions, talked about the issue with USA TODAY Sports.

Q: Obviously tough news with Kyrie. What was your reaction when you heard?

A: "First of all, from a personal standpoint, I've become good friends with Kyrie over the years. I traveled to South Africa with him and his Dad a year and a half ago, and I'm also a Duke grad. So I'm devastated for him personally. You never like to see injuries, especially at this level, and right in the middle of our highest-profile series. Whether or not there's more we can do to prevent injuries is something we're very focused on. It's always been part of the game — injuries happen, and they happen to high-profile players, they happen to guys who aren't so high profile. Whether there's better training practices, whether through better analytics, we can get a sense of what precise movements lead to injuries, whether it's a function of the schedule are all things that we're (looking at)."

Q: And you seem to be pretty focused on that issue ...

A: "Yeah, I am, and so is the Players Association. Everyone in this league has an interest in keeping our best players on the floor for more minutes, for more games, for longer careers. Like I said, it's not a new issue, but from a league standpoint things we can do is take the league resources by bringing together data from all 30 teams and not making it a solitary issue for any team or any given player. And trying to figure out the optimal amount of training players should be doing. I mean frankly, maybe they're working too hard. I mean talk to a guy like (NBA president of basketball operations) Rod Thorn, who has been with the league 50 years, and he'll tell you that in his day (players) took more time off in the summer. Maybe that's what's necessary. But also, guys used to play more minutes (in games)."

Q: For sure. I remember talking to Jerry West about the routine back-to-back-to-backs when he was playing.

A: "We used to play back to backs on Saturday and Sunday during the conference finals, even sometimes during the Finals. But again, that doesn't make it right. And unfortunately, we don't have perfect data (on injuries) going back since the beginning of the league. All we can do is start using the data that we have, and we've been tracking for several years now to see whether patterns emerge. It's the highest priority for the league, and that is keeping our players healthy.

"The good news is that the science these days helps players to come back — science and medicine — in ways they couldn't historically. I was listening to an interview with (New York Knicks great) Bernard King the other day — Bill Simmons had done a podcast with him.

"And for example, the injury I remember as a young man — being a huge Knicks fan — and Bernard King going out, and then watching his comeback, the kind of injury he had (a torn ACL, torn knee cartilage and broken leg bone in March of 1985) players come back from over time now. That's the other side of the coin, that players are recovering in ways they didn't historically. I would say all the discussions we've had about creating more space in the schedule, reducing the number of four-games-out-of-five-nights (stretches), all goes entirely on player health. There's no economic incentives for doing those things. And we're engaging in top doctors, top scientists from everywhere, and globally not just nationally to try and find a solution."

Follow Sam Amick on Twitter @sam_amick.

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