The NBA Season Has Barely Started. Why Are Stars Already Getting Injured?

Jaren Jackson Jr. played three games for the Utah Jazz last season before knee surgery ended his year. This season he lasted a few games before he tore the MCL in his right knee.

Utah’s medical staff said it will re-evaluate him in six weeks, and some reports suggest six to eight. The Jazz lost that game to Memphis, 110-105.

The injury that nobody could have scheduled around

Jackson’s injury came in the second quarter of a regular-season game. Lauri Markkanen also left that night, with a wrist sprain that his team treated as day-to-day. Two key Jazz players got hurt in the same loss.

I want to be careful here. Neither injury came from overuse, and neither is the kind that a smarter minutes plan prevents. A torn MCL is a contact injury, and a wrist sprain is a wrist sprain. That’s basketball, and it’s why the loudest explanation for early-season injuries is often the wrong one.

Load management became the answer to everything

The NBA has spent years arguing about load management, and the argument has made us worse at diagnosing injuries. When a star gets hurt, someone says he played too much. When a star sits, someone says the league is soft.

The evidence goes both ways. Kawhi Leonard sat out regularly in 2018-19 and then led Toronto to a championship. Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals, after a very heavy postseason, and Jayson Tatum tore his that same spring in the playoffs. Those injuries came in the highest-stakes games of the year, when no coach is limiting anyone’s minutes.

The more honest summary is that some injuries are workload and some are luck, and nobody can reliably tell which is which in advance. That’s an uncomfortable answer, so people reach for a simpler one.

The 65-game problem

The league tried to fix the visible side of this. Since the 2023-24 season, players generally need to appear in 65 games to be eligible for major awards. The rule was designed to stop stars from skipping regular-season games.

It also creates a strange incentive. A player on the edge of the threshold has a reason to play through a nagging injury, because sitting could cost him an award. Anthony Edwards fell short last season, and an appeal on his behalf was reportedly dismissed by an arbitrator.

That’s the part nobody likes to say out loud. The rule that punishes rest also rewards playing hurt, and one of those outcomes is much more dangerous than the other.

Where I land

I think the NBA is asking the wrong question. “Why are stars getting hurt early?” has no clean answer, because the answer is a mix of contact, bad luck and bodies that have played an enormous number of games.

The question the league can actually answer is what it wants to reward. If it pays players for showing up, some will show up hurt. If it lets them rest, some fans will complain, and some owners will too. Neither approach is free. A season-opening injury list is partly just the price of a sport played at that speed, by players that big, on knees that fragile.

Here’s the question I’d leave you with. If a star plays through pain to reach 65 games and tears something in game 64, who’s responsible: the player, the team or the rule?