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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. 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.
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Can he buck the odds like Dominique, or will it be all downhill from here?Īchilles injuries are bad.