line, he may be able to get back close to his pre-injury level of offensive production. If, like Brand, he can move those shots closer to the basket, or out behind the 3-pt. He’s actually taking less 3s as a percentage of shots taken than before his injury, perhaps due to defenses playing him differently or transitioning to a new team and new offense, and more shots in the 10-16 ft range. His FG% near the rim and 3-10 ft away have dropped dramatically, but he hasn’t redistributed those shots as effectively. Matthews hasn’t made that adjustment yet. He never quite got back to his pre-injury production but still managed to remain effective. Even though his FG% at each range didn’t change much, he was able to offset his decreased athleticism to a degree through better shot selection. In Brand’s case, it appears he struggled to get to the rim as often, so he compensated by shooting fewer long 2s (16 – 23 ft). Size of the bubbles represents FG% at that range. The greater the share of shots the player took at each range, the higher the bubble will be on the chart. *% of attempts is represented on the y-axis. While I was unable to find data for Wilkins and Laettner, you can see how Brand and Matthews responded to their injuries in terms of shot selection and field goal percentage (all data from and NBA.com). According to Wilkins, in a conversation with Ailene Voisin, he became "more fundamentally-sound", and added that it was like "the game slowed down" for him. Brand, Laettner, and ‘Nique each managed to, at least briefly, modify their games to account for their decreased athleticism.
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For a point guard or shooting guard who isn’t a knockdown shooter, losing even a little bit of acceleration or leaping ability can be the difference between starting and not playing at all. The recurring theme is that the injury, for obvious reasons, robs the player of their athleticism. That his injury occurred so early in his career certainly robbed him of his prime, but it may also have given him the time necessary to develop skills that will allow him to stay in the NBA longer than most of the others on this list. His performance took a significant drop following his Achilles injury, but he appears to be working his way back, making slow but steady adjustments and improvements to his game. It’s hard to say how good he would have been.Īnother interesting one-off is Wesley Matthews. In his case, the injury happened so early, just after his rookie season, that it’s difficult to determine how much it impacted to career.
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Jonas Jerebko stands as the lone exception whose performance does not appear to have suffered when comparing pre-injury performance to post-injury performance. He was voted an All-Star starter largely on reputation and due to his incredible popularity all 3 years after his injury, as he played only 6 games in 2013-14, and shot 37% and 36% from the field in 2014-16 respectively. Whether because of age, injury, mileage, or some combination of the three, Kobe never really recovered. It's important to distinguish that Kobe did not make it back to the All-Star game based on his level of play.
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Only Dominique, Elton Brand, and Christian Laettner were able to produce even reasonable facsimiles of their former selves, and only Dominique and Kobe made an All-Star game after his injury. The list is below, as presented by Chris Towers in the last piece linked above, with the addition of Wesley Matthews and Gay.Įven though each of these players made it back to the NBA, the injury effectively marked the end of most of their careers. The crux of the issue is that of the 15 other players who have returned to the NBA after a ruptured Achilles since 1992, only Dominique was able to get back to his pre-injury production. Much has been made of their impact on players in the NBA, and you can dig into the details of which NBA players have suffered from them and how they performed after here, here, and here. Can he buck the odds like Dominique, or will it be all downhill from here?Īchilles injuries are bad.