NBA

Which NBA teams have the best (and worst) injury luck?

By
Mat Issa
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Mat Issa Sports Editor

Mat Issa is based in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Yes, he spells his name with one "t." He's obsessed with NBA history, so much so that he's dedicated nearly two years of research to his two mini-series', "Blazing the Trail" and "The Quest for the Best." Right now, Mat goes to law school and writes about the NBA for The Analyst, Forbes, and of course, Basketball Insiders. His work has also been featured in ESPN, SB Nation, FanSided, Basketball News, ONE37pm, and Raptors Republic. Also, he's a lifelong Spartans fan. Go Green!

All posts by Mat Issa
Sports Editor

Updated25 mins ago on April 29, 2024

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Devin Booker, Phoenix Suns.

To win in the NBA, you need to be good. But you also need to be healthy. If you take a look at all the past NBA champions, you’ll see that, oftentimes, they were the team that was able to stay the healthiest throughout the postseason. After all, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

With this in mind, which NBA teams have had the best injury luck so far? And which ones have had the worst luck?

Teams With Best Injury Luck

To measure injury luck, we are going to look at a chart put together by the great @SravanNBA on Twitter (I refuse to call it X). He calculated the percentage of minutes missed via injury by every player who played at least 50 minutes on the season and 15 minutes per game. This filters out all the players who are missing games simply because they aren’t good enough to crack the rotation.

The five teams with the best injury luck (as of December 17th) are the Oklahoma City Thunder, Toronto Raptors, New York Knicks, San Antonio Spurs, and Minnesota Timberwolves.

Coincidentally enough, the Timberwolves and Thunder have the two best records in the Western Conference. Both of those teams have been playing great basketball, but one can’t help but wonder how they will look when/if their injury luck regresses to the mean.

The Thunder have had especially great luck. They have only lost 160.5 minutes to injuries. Meanwhile, the Raptors, the team with the second-fewest minutes lost, have lost 314.3 minutes (almost twice as many as the Thunder).

As an aside, it is a bit concerning that the Raptors and Spurs are struggling as much as they are despite being pretty healthy compared to the rest of the league.

Teams With Bad Injury Luck

On the flip side, the five teams with the worst injury luck are the Miami Heat, Memphis Grizzlies, Portland Trail Blazers, New Orleans Pelicans, and Charlotte Hornets. And lo and behold, none of these five teams are in the top 6 in their respective conferences.

Keep an eye on these five teams because if they can eventually get healthy, their record may drastically improve. Last season, the Heat also had some really unfortunate injury luck. But they were able to get relatively healthy for the playoffs, and as a result, they made a miraculous run to the NBA Finals (and became the most Google-searched NBA team of 2023 in the process). Who knows, maybe something like that will happen again this season.

For those wondering, here is the link to the entire chart.