Orlando Magic’s injury caution has context with youth basketball worries

The Orlando Magic have been unusually cautious with player injuries under David Tenney’s direction. That caution has new context now.

Mohamed Bamba is willing to poke fun at himself and the situation he is in.

He is a 21-year-old after all. And the early part of his basketball career has been anything but instant gratification. There is a bit of youthful impatience in his eye.

Mohamed Bamba wanted to play when the Orlando Magic shut him down for the rest of Summer League after one game and 15 minutes. You could see how eager he was to get back on the court as he traveled with the team throughout the final 31 games, which he missed with a fracture in his left tibia.

No one could blame Bamba for poking a little fun at himself and the patience he has had to have to get back on the court.

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Bamba’s rookie season did not go to some people’s plans. He did not make the instant defensive impact many thought. In fact, the Magic were significantly worse on defense and worse overall with Bamba on the floor.

That was somewhat expected. He was a rookie destined to make mistakes.

His return at Summer League was encouraging. He was aggressive offensively and displayed added and improved strength. Defensively, he at least picked up where he left off — still a bit jumpy defensively chasing blocks but holding his own and still picking up the speed of the game.

That was just his first game back. It would be reasonable to think he would get better.

But then the Magic shut him down for the rest of the Summer League. He reportedly expressed some discomfort — although not on his previously injured leg — and the Magic took the cautious route of shutting him down.

This has been a common theme throughout the Jeff Weltman era since he hired David Tenney as the team’s High Performance Director — a catch-all position that oversees the team’s training, medical and strength and conditioning staff. Tenney has long been on the forefront of sports science and implementing it with professional teams.

This has obviously informed his approach to helping strengthen players and prevent injuries and how his staff have treated injuries and a players’ eventual return to the court.

The team has gone through a list of young players they have slow-played in their recovery ensuring their health before sending them back onto the floor.

Bamba, for instance, first noted discomfort in his foot in early January and was held out for four games. He returned and played before the team shut him down for the season when it returned.

Jonathan Isaac has gone through a long journey with the team’s medical staff, spraining his ankle in his rookie year and then missing most of his rookie season. It was odd to see him miss 50-plus games with a sprained ankle, the most simple and commong of basketball injuries.

Then Orlando went out and drafted Chuma Okeke, recovering from a torn ACL. And acquired Markelle Fultz, rehabbing from thoracic outlet syndrome.

The Magic have had a lot of injuries to their young players. And, much to the chagrin of fans, they have always remained tight-lipped about their progress and cautious about their returns.

Orlando certainly has confidence in the team’s ability to help players recovery.

In some cases here, there is at least some context. Young players around the league — and indeed in the basketball world — are facing an increase in injuries that is concerning medical staffs around the league.

Baxter Holmes of ESPN.com detailed the growing crisis in basketball. Young players facing overuse injuries that athletic trainers typically see in older players. As one trainer described it in the headline of the article, “These kids are ticking time bombs.”

One in the article even went so far as to say those that make it to the NBA are not there because of their skill so much as they survived the process of getting to the league.

This is a growing crisis for the sport with the league and USA Basketball trying to implement guidelines for safe development at the grassroots level.

But there are cultural problems at the root level too. Families are chasing the dream of making the NBA and college scholarships. And there is now a machine of amateur tournaments and yearround training to achieve those dreams.

No one is going to tell someone who has the talent and the drive to slow down in pursuit of their goals. That is essentially what the league is trying to do.

Orlando Magic

The way the article describes it, trainers in the NBA are trying to get players into their professional programs as quickly as possible and trying to make up the ground they did not receive by overplaying and overtraining as amateur players, hoping to avoid a disaster.

Teams have long tried to head this off at the pass. As Holmes describes, this is something Joe Rogowski saw in his time as the head trainer for the Magic:

"As the Orlando Magic’s strength and conditioning coach from 2006-12, Joe Rogowski saw young players struggle with simple movement patterns. So to help, he’d have players participate in different sports during the summers, like boxing, swimming and beach volleyball. It broke up the monotony, but also cross-trained them after years of hyperfocus on basketball."

Players like Marcin Gortat and Courtney Lee are still known to take up the boxing classes Rogowski had them go through in the summer when they return to Orlando. Rogowski is now the director of sports medicine and research for the NBPA.

That cross-training was an important part of the Magic’s offseason training program. But in the last 10 years, specialization in youth athletes has gotten worse.

NBA prospects are identified at earlier ages and the focus on getting to that draft stage or into college only has deepened.

NBA teams are in the business of injury prevention. And much of their rookie contracts are now about building good workout habits, managing work load and developing skills. Players are pulled in a million different directions.

It makes sense then for a team like the Magic to find some time to hit the pause button. And that is what these injuries have enabled the team to do.

This is the context on how Tenney and his staff have handled injuries with the Magic.

The team has been overly cautious with injuries to players, ensuring they are fully healthy before taking the court. Every player has gone through their process slowly and the Magic’s training staff has rightfully taken a long-term view to player health.

The Magic are in no rush to bring Markelle Fultz back, not putting a timetable on his return and waiting until he is fully healthy. The team shut down Bamba after one game and a little bit of discomfort to lower his stress impact and ensure his health for the games that really matter.

There may be no connection at all between this trend and the Magic’s handling of injuries on their roster. Medical treatment should be personal to each patient and each player. The Magic are ultimately doing what they think is in the best interest for the player’s long-term health.