Today, I read that Franz Wagner of the Orlando Magic has torn his oblique, just a few weeks after his teammate Paolo Banchero suffered the same injury. Having followed the NBA for nearly three decades, I don’t recall torn obliques being a common occurrence in the league. This has left me wondering how the two best players on the same NBA team could sustain the same debilitating injury so close to the start of the season.
I’d be very interested in hearing from more experienced experts in the fields of pain and rehab. Does this situation seem unusual to you? Could it suggest issues with the strength and conditioning program in Orlando, especially since, in my perception, this isn’t a typical basketball injury?
Definitely an interesting question from many perspectives, e.g. how were these injuries diagnosed (same clinician?), what is/are the mechanism(s) of injury, and what risk factor(s) led to this, if true?
I haven’t seen enough information on how each were diagnosed to feel comfortable with the label of torn oblique. That said, there are a number of case reports in sport discussing a torn oblique where the tendon inserts onto the iliac crest, as well as others with MRI evidence of tears at the level of the ribs.
Risk factors appear to be high work load relative to preparation in a sport involving high velocity rotation…and some bad luck.
Whether or not these injuries were due to a deficit in the S/C program for the team vs individual factors vs other inputs is speculative, but I’d be interested to learn more about it!
Very intersting take. I was originally thinking that they might be doing something in the weightroom that was too high volume and in combination with the stress of actual nba games makes the players more susceptible to an oblique injury. But given the fact that two years ago Cole Anthony, who was also with the Magic back then, was also diagnosed with a torn oblique it might also be a diagnostic fallacy of the medicak staff.
Could be! On the other hand, these players are in an resource-rich environment, which makes access to advanced imaging like MRI and more likely. I can’t say whether or not the diagnoses were accurate or even if the media reports are accurate.
In any case, I’d favor more bad luck in a rare injury like this.
Jst a little update: Yesterday, Franz’s brother Mo, who also plays for the Orlando Magic, went down with a torn ACL. Although this injury is more common in basketball and seems unrelated to his teammates’ torn obliques, it is still unusual that within the first 2.5 months of the season, three players from the same team have suffered severe injuries.
If we assume some proportion of the NBA comes into the season under-trained, I think the rash of injuries at the beginning of the season and pre-season is somewhat predictable. There’s some data on this:
Injury incidence increased throughout the season, with similar injury trends for injury severity and body part; however, there was a significant decrease in February, suggesting a potential effect of the All Star break on recovery- Source
Whether the lack of preparation is due to poor coaching, previous injury compromising training, or something else is unknown, but I do think this jibes with our view on injury risk reduction.
That the majority of atraumatic injury risk is due to insufficient preparation, e.g. not being in shape for the season in this case. In my view, the next biggest factor is luck, though that is outside of our control, you know?