By Sean Kennedy (@PhillyFastBreak)
By now, most people have either seen, or heard about and consciously avoided watching, the horrifying sequence where Paul George broke his leg during Friday night’s U.S. national team scrimmage. I won’t link to the video here because there’s a chance you’re eating breakfast while reading this article and I’ve found people don’t generally enjoy their bowls of Cheerios with a side of protruding bone. The Pacers star forward has received a universal outpouring of sympathy and support; even if a player competes for your most hated rival, you hate to see anyone cut down by a freak injury.
George’s injury has the old debate going again about whether players should be participating in international competitions when their NBA teams have so much invested in them financially. Despite losing Lance Stephenson during the offseason, the Pacers were still considered to have a decent shot to emerge out of a wide-open Eastern Conference this year. However, with George now out for the season, it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Indiana missed the playoffs altogether. I’m not going to go into the whole argument on the subject here, but I do agree with the stance that these guys would be playing pick-up ball to stay in shape anyway; this injury just so happened to have occurred in the national spotlight.
Unquestionably, losing a top player can completely alter the fortunes of a franchise in a given season. Philadelphia fans saw this first-hand when Derrick Rose went down with his original ACL injury in the 2012 playoffs. Suddenly, the Bulls went from co-favorites to reach the finals out of the Eastern Conference, to one beaten by the Sixers in a 7-game series. The vagaries of injury are simply something that can strike at any moment and are not something those in a front office position can do too much about. The best an organization can do is ensure it builds a roster with plenty of depth to offset the temporary loss of a player. However, especially with basketball where only 5 players a side take the court and one guy can have such a huge impact, when a star goes down, there’s really nothing anybody can do to make up for the loss.
The point is, winning in the NBA, or any league, is incredibly hard. Even if a GM does everything right over the course of many years to put his team in the best possible position to succeed, all of that work can be undone when a player comes down wrong on a hardwood court. We saw it Friday night with George, we saw it a couple years ago with Rose, and we’ll unfortunately see it many times again in the future.
From the Sixers’ perspective, they’re taking a long-term approach to try to build a true contender. Everything the organization has done makes sense with that vision in mind, but it’s certainly nothing close to a guarantee of future success. Whether it’s lottery luck, or a cruel twist of fate in a scrimmage, the smartest minds in the game are still subject to the same universal randomness as everyone else. To borrow a poker analogy, all you can do is put your chips in the middle with the best hand, and let the cards fall where they may.
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