Request: Dodgeball: Underdog Story

[HawkItus]

Gracias in advance.

[Dnice]

Don't have that either but why ESPN would use such an old pic of Josh, before the uniform change is beyond me, lol

[Admin]

http://insider.espn....=PERDiem-100226

Thanks to a lack of injuries, the Thunder, Hawks and Grizzlies have had a healthy outlook this season.

A couple of days ago, another writer asked me a simple question. Do the surprise results of Atlanta and Oklahoma City, he wondered, make you rethink how you predict teams at the start of the season?

Well, that got me thinking. We come up with all kinds of reasons for the success of surprise teams -- the young guys learned how to win, the star player stepped his game up another level, a new acquisition gave a much-needed boost, etc.

I don't mean to denigrate those factors, because for both Atlanta and Oklahoma City, they're very real. The Hawks and Thunder are young teams that learned how to play hard every night, stars like Kevin Durant and Josh Smith have stepped their games up this season, and new acquisitions (Thabo Sefolosha for Oklahoma City, Jamal Crawford for Atlanta) certainly have been helpful.

But there's another element to their success that people rarely consider: good health. Shockingly good, pristine health, actually.

Look at four of this season's biggest surprise teams: the Thunder, Hawks, Rockets and Grizzlies. Now, do you know which NBA teams have the fewest missed games due to injuries among their top six players this season? Would you believe ... the Thunder, Hawks, Rockets and Grizzlies?

As part of a research project, I went through each team and counted how many games were missed by the top six players (those projected to be in the top six at the start of the season). Why the top six? Because those are the players required to do the heavy lifting during the course of the season.

We often see "games missed due to injury" as a stat for teams, but that often includes players who weren't going to see much action anyway. Golden State, for example, can't really claim that having Speedy Claxton unavailable for 57 games altered the path of its season.

Granted, even among a team's top six, not all missed games are created equal -- Cleveland without Anthony Parker is a much different proposition than Cleveland without LeBron James. This system also doesn't account for "walking wounded" -- Chicago's Derrick Rose, for example, didn't miss any games with an early-season ankle problem, but he clearly wasn't the same player.

FEWEST MISSED GAMES BY TOP-6 PLAYERS

Team Games

Atlanta 2

Oklahoma City 2

Houston 4

Memphis 6

Despite those shortcomings, parsing the injury data into this neat little shorthand is quite helpful, allowing us to make quick comparisons across teams.

In the cases of the Hawks and Thunder, their ability to dodge the injury bug this season has been particularly astounding. Atlanta has one missed game from Crawford and one from Marvin Williams, and that's it. Joe Johnson, Al Horford, Josh Smith and Mike Bibby have played all 56 games thus far, keeping the Hawks within striking range of Orlando and Boston in the race for the East's No. 2 seed.

Similarly, the only top-six player for OKC to miss a game thus far is center Nenad Krstic, who missed two games. With the help of such fortunate health, Oklahoma City has emerged as one of the West's top surprises and seems on pace to win about a dozen games more than anyone expected.

Houston has missed only four games from its pre-trade deadline core group -- three from Trevor Ariza (he was suspended for one of those games) and one from Carl Landry. While Rockets fans will argue this number should be much higher because of the absences of Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady, we're comparing to preseason expectations -- Yao's and McGrady's injuries already were factored in at that time.

Memphis is perhaps the greatest example of the fortunes of good health because of the vast chasm in quality that separates the Grizzlies' starters and reserves. Memphis has four good players and has only two missed games from that group, both by Rudy Gay (one was for personal reasons). The other four games top-six players have missed came from the two replaceable parts (Sam Young and Mike Conley with two apiece).

MOST MISSED GAMES BY TOP-6 PLAYERS

Team Games

Portland 162

Golden State 108

New Jersey 85

Detroit 81

We can reach similar conclusions looking at the opposite end of the spectrum. Portland, Golden State, New Jersey and Washington have fallen well short of expectations this season, and injuries have played a major role for each. The Blazers have a ridiculous 162 games missed by their top six, with ironman Andre Miller the only one to escape the bug -- and I didn't even include Joel Przybilla (30 games) or Rudy Fernandez (19) in their top six. Staring at that big, fat 162, it's no wonder they've fallen to eighth in the West and it's a minor miracle they're not even lower on the totem pole.

Golden State has had several injuries to insignificant players, but important players have missed time, too -- Andris Biedrins and Anthony Randolph have combined for 50 missed games and counting, dismantling the frontcourt, while Kelenna Azubuike lasted just nine contests before a knee injury ended his season.

In New Jersey, injuries have made a bad situation worse. Brook Lopez is the only Net not to miss time, and Devin Harris has been at half strength on a lot of the nights he's played. Detroit, on the other hand, is a more typical example of injuries to good players knocking a playoff contender sideways. With Richard Hamilton, Tayshaun Prince and Ben Gordon combining for 78 missed games, the Pistons' hopes of busting into the East's top eight became a long shot.

So what's a normal number of injuries for the top six? The league median is 31, and 19 of the league's 30 teams are between 20 and 46. Obviously, that number will continue to rise as the season goes on, with a likely year-end median in the low 40s.

While this season's data points to health as a major factor in performance, I should point out that injuries can be overcome and that avoiding them isn't an automatic ticket to a winning record. The Bucks, for instance, seem playoff-bound despite 56 missed games, including 38 and rising from high-scoring guard Michael Redd. The Knicks, on the other hand, have lost just nine games to injury from their top six players but are lottery-bound regardless.

Nonetheless, health often goes a long way toward explaining how a team has managed to surprise us. Thus, the next time some club takes the league by storm and lands several spots higher in the standings than we expected, maybe we shouldn't talk to its players or coaches. Maybe we should talk to the team doctor -- chances are, he won't be very busy anyway.