With injuries to two major players for the Orlando Magic, high performance director David Tenney explains his approach to his position and player recovery.
When Orlando Magic president of basketball operations Jeff Weltman took over he changed everything about the team. He truly was a president of basketball operations, getting his hands into everything about the Magic’s front office.
One of the first hires he made was to hire David Tenney as the team’s high performance director.
That seemed like a made-up title for a new position. A combination of buzz words to describe the team’s new head trainer or chief medical staffer.
But Tenney was a big hire — someone who bought into a lot of medical sports science with the Seattle Sounders before a lot of other medical staff professionals. And the team gave him a lot of freedom to remake how the team approaches training its players.
Tenney would describe himself as a generalist, looking for ways to make the most of the Magic’s training and medical approach and hiring a staff of performance specialists to execute that approach.
If everything is going right, the public does not ever really know the extent of what someone like Tenney and his staff does. A lot of what they do is private — both for medical privacy reasons and for team proprietary information reasons. The only thing that matters is how players recover from injury and improve physically throughout the course of their careers.
Tenney’s job is to provide the tools to help players improve physically and recover from injuries or fatigue to get through the season.
Injuries still happen. They can be random. So it is no one’s fault they happen. It is up to Tenney and his staff to help players get back healthy and then stay healthy when they return. It is his staff that often has to take the long-term vision for the franchise and their players’ health.
Wednesday brought Tenney and his staff into some focus. The Magic lost Nikola Vucevic to a right ankle sprain (he will be evaluated again in 7-10 days) and Aaron Gordon to a right ankle contusion (his return is dependent on how he responds to treatment, it is not considered as serious as Nikola Vucevic’s injury). Both are out for the foreseeable future.
And their recoveries and eventual return to the court is in Tenney and his staff’s hands.
As it so happens, Tenney joined the Orlando Magic Pod Squad on this week’s episode. It was recorded before the injuries struck the team.
But in the podcast, Tenney explains a little bit more about what he and his staff does and his approach to medical science, as well as some of the big issues facing medical staffs across the NBA.
It gives at least a clue into how he and the Magic plan to manage injuries to two of their key players:
So far, the team and the players have given the staff plenty of trust. And the results have shown.
It was frustrating to see Jonathan Isaac miss 57 games with a simple sprained ankle during Jonathan Isaac’s rookie year. But the patience has paid off as Isaac has remained healthy and built good work habits to stay on the court.
The staff also got with Markelle Fultz and helped him with his recovery. Those results have been self-evident as the team has managed his recovery and gotten him back on the court and playing at a high level.
The medical staff consults closely with players and coach Steve Clifford. It appears they have a lot of final say on when players are ready to return and the workload they can do.
The team is constantly monitoring Markelle Fultz’s recovery. it appears he is on some kind of minutes restriction as he is still dealing with some pain in his shoulder. Despite the team clearly needing Fultz to play more minutes to amplify his already positive impact, the medical staff is still pumping the brakes a bit on his return as they try to have him ready for the whole season.
As Tenney described it on the podcast when discussing Isaac’s recovery. The thought process is looking at what kind of player Fultz will be when he is 25 a few years down the road.
The same goes for Mohamed Bamba. Bamba is also still managing his injury from last year. The team is trying to continue adding muscle to his frame and getting him in the weight room. All while ensuring there are no lasting impacts from the fracture in his left leg he suffered last year.
In fact, Mohamed Bamba complained of pain early and the medical staff was able to shut him down and identify the injury early.
Tenney and his staff have been fairly cautious — especially with the team’s young players. But that caution should have long-term benefits for the team. And players have bought into this process too.
The Magic were successful in doing a lot of preventive work last year. After changing out almost their entire training staff last year, the team got lucky and did not face any major injuries last year — Mohamed Bamba’s injury and Isaiah Briscoe‘s torn meniscus were the most significant.
Every season will bring new challenges, of course. No one could foresee either Aaron Gordon or Nikola Vucevic going down the way they did. And now their recoveries are in Tenney and his staff’s hands.