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Message: [QUOTE="pj, post: 3346252, member: 2524"] I don't dispute the basic point that a fatigued body is at higher risk of injury. But, you seem to be forgetting what I was responding to, which was this: A few observations: [LIST=1] [*]Steps can be taken to mitigate the injury risk from extra minutes of play, e.g. improving conditioning (so that 35 mpg in a well conditioned player is as low risk as 25 mpg in a less well conditioned player) or the player pacing himself in the game (e.g. having another player bring the ball up court to rest the point guard). [*]Most of a player's actual playing time is in practice not games, and practices can be nearly as intense as games, so an extra 7-10 mpg (in a 30 game season, 200-300 minutes of play over 5 months) is a pretty small increment in load, especially if the player's practice burden is reduced when he needs rest. [*]It's not the case that fatigue and wear and tear are cumulative. All exercise breaks down tissue/muscle and then it gets rebuilt over the next few days. In that sense all fatigue and wear and tear are regenerative of strength. One cannot simply equate higher usage to higher injury risk. A higher volume of sound usage actually reduces injury risk. Lightly used players can have a high injury risk. [/LIST] Given these observations, it's simply wrong to say that "Gilbert at 35 mpg has almost no chance of making it through the season" and to couple it with "Gilbert at 25-28 mpg has a decent chance of making it through the season". There's no way that both of these are correct if Hurley, Alosi, Gilbert, and the trainer are doing their jobs. His usage level will not be a major factor. If everyone involved is doing things correctly, the injury risk is nearly the same with either usage. Either Gilbert is at high risk of injury (due to being intrinsically injury prone) or he is not. [/QUOTE]

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