First came the news that the captain of the Serbian national team Bogdan Bogdanovic due to the rupture of the muscles of the back lodge will not be able to continue the competition at this year's Eurobasket. The injuries then began to line up like on a treadmill.
German center Johannes Feutmann ended the competition due to a knee injury, followed by Lithuanian national team playmaker Rokas Jokubaitis. France was left with only one center until the end of the tournament due to Alex Sara's calf injury.
Montenegro will not be able to count on center Zoran Nikolić, and Estonia's captain Sim Sander Vene has finished the championship. Finally, Latvian representative Andrejs Gražulis injured his foot in the match against Serbia and will not be able to play in the next competition.
Latvia could be without two important players, as Arturs Žagars, who has been injured again, is doubtful to continue the competition.
So, at least seven basketball players ended the competition already in the Eurobasket group stage due to injuries. Latvia coach Luka Banki offered a solution:
"When you select 12 players, the most important thing is versatility. So that they can play in several positions. You have to take care of the troubles, which happen to us too much. Why don't we give three more players a chance at the European Championship? In case of injuries, they would be ready to jump in," Banky asked.
However, would expanding the roster be the solution to the problem or the treatment of the symptoms? Many have found the reason for the huge number of injuries to be that the players are overloaded with a tight schedule of matches.
Many teams, little time
Too many injuries at Eurobasket, and the group stage is not over yet. Part of the problem is the schedule, too many matches are scheduled in a very short time. In my opinion, increasing the number of teams and matches was not the best idea," wrote Matej Petek, the author of the Slovenian podcast Sportinfo, on the social network X.
The group stage began on August 27 for groups A and B, and a day later for groups C and D. In both cases, it lasts eight days. In those eight days, each of the teams will play five matches. In translation, there is on average not even two days between two duels in the group stage.
Only the start of the elimination phase on September 6 and 7 will bring a somewhat lighter schedule for the teams, who will have two or three days of rest between matches.
Which is why injuries are more and more common
A tight schedule in modern sports is nothing new. The NBA league, the most famous basketball league in the world, is known for its high pace. There was an "epidemic" of Achilles tendon injuries last season - the victims were Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Halliburton, James Wiseman, Isiah Jackson, Drew Smith...
As physical therapist and University of Delaware professor Karin Gravare Silbernagel explained to ESPN, today's calf injuries occur due to uneven strengthening of the upper legs compared to the lower legs.
"You use the calf in virtually every movement you walk or run, so it's one of the most common injuries when you combine calf and Achilles injuries."
The director of sports physical medicine and rehabilitation at Stanford, Michael Frederickson, believes that injuries are primarily caused by overuse - it is necessary to monitor the relationship between the load and the recovery time.
Photo: AP Photo/Nate BillingsTyrese Halliburton's injury likely cost the Pacers an NBA ring
"These athletes are probably the most physically prepared they've ever been, so it's not a fitness issue," he says.
Nirav Pandya, professor of orthopedic surgery at the University of California in San Francisco, adds that due to the rhythm of the playoffs every other night, as well as the Olympic preparations, this year's training was even stronger than usual. Basketball players often played 39-40 minutes per game, instead of 25-30 during the regular season.
"We know that every time the number of minutes increases significantly over a period of five to 10 games, the risk of injury increases," says Pandya.
Also, today's athletes have more "mileage" than previous generations, because they start playing at a high level at a young age.
Problems in football too
It is true that today's professional athletes who play at the highest level receive a fabulously large amount of money for their engagement - it is millions, even tens of millions of euros per year.
However, money cannot change the fact that the human body has physical limits. Professional sports are trying to push these boundaries year after year.
That's why the mass injuries of basketball players at this year's European Championship are not strange. Basketball is not the only sport that suffers from this problem. A serious debate about the workload of professional footballers began in 2021, when Pedri, then only eighteen years old, broke the previous record of Bruno Fernandes and played an incredible 73 games in one year for Barcelona and the Spanish national team.
Namely, according to the latest report of the International Union of Professional Footballers (FIFPRO), the intense rhythm imposed by overlapping obligations between clubs and national teams endangers the mental and physical health of athletes and realistically shortens the duration of their careers. The 'Player Workload Monitoring 2023/24' survey shows that some footballers have less than one day's rest per week, in breach of international health and safety standards.
FIFPRO is therefore recently in an open dispute with the management of the International Football Federation (FIFA).
"A busy calendar of matches, lack of an adequate period for physical and mental recovery, extreme conditions in which the game is played, lack of meaningful dialogue and neglect of the players' rights to social rights have unfortunately become the basis of the FIFA business model. And it is a model that puts the health of the players at risk and sidelines those who are the heart of this game", it was stated in the FIFPRO statement after the meeting held at the end of July, attended by representatives of 58 players' unions from around the world.
This theme runs through entire sports eras. Back in 2002, Fifa's chief doctor Jiri Dvorak warned about the increase in the number of injuries and emphasized that it is necessary to set a maximum number of games per season.
"There are rules about the maximum number of hours a truck driver can spend behind the wheel, but there are no rules for football players," he told the Observer at the time.
