After Derrick Rose & Iman Shumpert both went down with ACL tears yesterday, the sports world began blaming the compressed schedule for these & all injuries that have occurred this season.
I adamantly disagreed for many reasons, but who am I? Well, a highly regarded surgeon agrees with me.
Dr. David Altchek from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York said:
“There is no evidence that wear and tear, or that kind of issue, playing too much, really has any correlation with ACL injuries in any sport that we’ve ever studied,”
In fact, he went on to say that he believes fatigue would actually reduce the chances of this type of injury.
“In fact, I think if you’re tired, you’re a lot less likely to tear your ACL because you’re not going to be as explosive,” said Altchek, who has operated on players such as Josh Howard, David West and Purdue’s Robbie Hummel, and been a consultant for the NBA.
In addition to fatigue not damaging ligaments like so many “experts” in the Twitterverse proclaimed yesterday, if the compressed schedule didn’t apply to anyone, it’d be Rose.
As everyone knows, Rose has missed nearly half the season with various ailments & injuries & missed a huge chunk of the season heading down the stretch.
You can argue that his other injuries may have made him more susceptible to this type of injury, although I don’t think evidence supports that, you can certainly not argue that he was fatigued from the schedule. Rose has been plenty rested.
Did the schedule contribute to other injuries throughout the playoffs? Probably. Could fatigue contribute to the likelihood of an ACL injury? Maybe. Typically if you ask a question to 3 doctors you’ll get 3 different answers. By no means do I think this doctor’s opinion is gospel.
You can also argue that because this doctor consults for the NBA that he’ll be inclined to defend the NBA’s scheduling. And maybe so.
But I 100% disagree with the notion that Rose was fatigued from the schedule & that is the reason he tore his ACL. If (and I don’t think it’s related), fatigue increases your chances of tearing an ACL, the factor for the fatigue for Rose was because he wasn’t in game shape due to injuries & rest. NOT because of the schedule.
