Youth Basketball’s Injury Crisis
With innumerable advances being made in treatments and medicine, why are young basketball players getting injured more often than ever?
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July 5 — The hype entering the game was unreal. After all, it was the first matchup between Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett in the NBA. But after just one half of basketball, which featured some explosive dunks from Williamson and inefficient shooting from Barrett, Williamson was injured and ruled out for the rest of the Summer League.
After the game, Mike Krzyzewski, Williamson’s coach at Duke, said, “I don’t think he’s [Williamson] in the playing shape or the mental shape to play”, and added that he believed that Williamson should have skipped the Summer League.
Krzyzewski’s comments were shocking to many, especially since Williamson is a once-in-a-generation athlete, but perhaps, maybe they should have been expected. Just consider the workload Williamson has carried throughout his life. Per ESPN, he began playing on youth basketball at 5 years old, which included competing against players twice his age, playing high school basketball, and playing on the AAU circuit during the summers, which include 5–6 game tournaments on weekends and high intensity practices during the week. Once he got to Duke, not only was he dealing with the intensity of carrying a D-1 basketball program, but he also had to deal with the pressure of being the most heavily covered player in college basketball in recent memory.
In fact, like Williamson, many recent top prospects have suffered injuries early in their careers. Markelle Fultz, Ben Simmons, Joel Embiid, Lonzo Ball, and Jabari Parker, who were all top-3 picks, all struggled with injuries early on in their careers. Some of them had not even turned 20 when they suffered their first major injury.
So, despite sports medicine being more advanced than ever, young basketball players will continue to suffer serious injuries unless parents stop specializing their kids or a change is made in the culture of youth basketball.
You are a teenage basketball player. By the time you were 6, you had begun playing basketball on a travel team. When you turned 10, you began practicing daily. Once you reached high school, you were waking up at 5:30 to practice your shooting before school, and after a two hour practice, you come home to lift weights and improve your conditioning. In the summer, you play in tournaments every weekend, with intense practices during the week.
But one day, something feels off. You didn’t land awkwardly, or make contact with another player, but your knee is in extreme pain. Soon, you’ll realize that you will need surgery; that your knee was injured because of the stress put on it. And now you are in a vicious cycle of returning to the court, only to need more rehabilitation. You watch as your offers from college programs dissipate, and as your teammate, the one who you have always dominated, gets a scholarship offer because he was able to play the whole season had a growth spurt, making him a more appealing option than you. Your basketball career is finished before it even began.
This scenario has played out for many youth basketball players, especially those who start intense basketball training when they are very young. Do you ever wonder what happened to that basketball prodigy you saw on the news one night? The answer is probably some combination of injuries and a lack of physical growth. This applies to basketball phenoms who get college offers before they have turned 14 and pre-teens featured on basketball mixtapes too.
The reality of basketball is that taller players will always have an advantage over smaller players. This is why trying to scout players that haven’t hit their growth spurt is more or less a guessing game. While intense training can help a 9 year old stand out from his playing field, they will inevitably find that as he moves to the next level — high school/AAU basketball — there will be other players that are bigger, taller, and faster simply due to genetics.
“Bigger. Faster. Stronger.” has become the un-official motto of basketball players everywhere trying to work on their games and their bodies. The act of specializing in a sport at a young age has become commonplace, but especially so in youth basketball. The issue with specializing is that it causes players to burn-out both physically and mentally before they have reached adulthood.
It seems to make sense why parents are specializing their kids in sports at a young age. They are just seeking a competitive advantage. But it is also logical to see why specialization is actually doing more harm than good for athletes. After all, in a vacuum, if a basketball player is only using the same few muscles and joints by doing the same movements over and over again, it is clear why those muscles and joints get worn down quickly. If parents allow their kids to play multiple sports, then every muscle and joint in their body will be less worn down.
The NBA, along with Team USA Basketball have been attempting to create reasonable guidelines for youth basketball players to follow regarding their training regiments.
However, the culture being created in the youth/AAU basketball community are not helping the NBA set reasonable guidelines for youth basketball. While some parents may decide to not specialize their children early on, more parents will continue to specialize their children with the false assumption that this will help improve their child’s chances of playing basketball at a college or professional level.
To summarize the issue with youth basketball, just read the slogan of a popular advertisement featuring Kevin Durant released by Nike in 2018:
Rise. Grind. Shine. Again.
Read the youth basketball guidelines created by the NBA and Team USA Basketball here.
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