The Washington Wizards had a disappointing 41-41 season, when they were supposed to be one of the league's better teams. A big part of that was the injuries that occurred during the season.
Bradley Beal played a career low 55 games, where he only started 35 of them. Nene and Drew Gooden both had calf-related injuries, limiting them to 57 and 30 games. Marcin Gortat had back injuries that made him lose 7 games this season. Otto Porter also missed 7 games due to a hit to a thigh. Alan Anderson only played for 13 games, and John Wall missed the last 5 games of the season due to a swollen right knee.
They fired longtime athletic trainer Eric Waters to overhaul the program, where they focus on the clinical side, such as
“developing new treatments, therapy, studying trends, taking into account genetics to understand injuries and many other aspects by having a more specialized medical group rather just a head athletic trainer and an assistant.”
With this, hopefully they can extend the careers of all their players, especially Bradley Beal, who has had injuries in almost every season he has played, and franchise player John Wall:
With the Wizards, signs of a shift to this philosophy were evident when Beal developed a fourth stress reaction in his lower right leg for his fourth consecutive season. The Wizards implemented a strategy to use all of the tools they have aside from traditional treatment, such as the SVU cameras, analytics and other devices that measure his workload, stress and impact on the bones and joints in the leg.
They believe they have a better grasp on how to treat him for what essentially is an overuse injury. Wall is noted for arriving at Verizon Center hours before games for acupuncture just so he could get himself play. He'd spend an inordinate amount of time on the trainer's table postgame, too, but the discomfort never left.
Hopefully the Wizards can make the playoffs again, instead of missing them.
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