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One of the biggest stories so far through the Bucks season has obviously been the injuries. It's all part of what seems like a giant built-in excuse machine that the Bucks have turned into, but there's no denying that it's had a significant impact on their underwhelming 14-21 start. Being the curious person that I am, I wanted to find out how that compared to other teams around the league.
So, I went to Basketball Reference and looked at how many games notable players on each team missed, and then looked at the starting lineups and amount of games started to determine how many games the "starters" missed. This was a bit more difficult for the teams with major in-season trades such as the Magic, but I took them into account as well. The general rule was that if the player played over 15 minutes a game he would be included. This is only a rough estimate and does not take into account the value of each player to his team, but it's something to take a look at if you're curious. Also, this does not take into account players who haven't played at all this season. So players like Kendrick Perkins, etc, will not be counted. Hit the jump for more.
Note that this data is only through games on January 5th:
| Teams | Total games missed due to injury | Starters' games missed due to injury |
|---|---|---|
| 76ers | 28 | 22 |
| Celtics | 47 | 25 |
| Raptors | 67 | 34 |
| Nets | 25 | 26 |
| Knicks | 16 | 6 |
| Pistons | 16 | 14 |
| Cavaliers | 29 | 17 |
| Bulls | 30 | 26 |
| Bucks | 77 | 56 |
| Pacers | 13 | 7 |
| Hawks | 31 | 19 |
| Heat | 38 | 3 |
| Wizards | 72 | 37 |
| Bobcats | 17 | 15 |
| Jazz | 42 | 9 |
| Blazers | 46 | 17 |
| Nuggets | 72 | 44 |
| Thunder | 29 | 20 |
| Timberwolves | 58 | 28 |
| Lakers | 25 | 24 |
| Clippers | 46 | 41 |
| Kings | 21 | 15 |
| Warriors | 35 | 26 |
| Suns | 22 | 18 |
| Mavericks | 24 | 18 |
| Spurs | 40 | 0 |
| Rockets | 59 | 51 |
| Hornets | 6 | 1 |
| Grizzlies | 17 | 8 |
| Magic | 32 | 19 |
As you can see, the Bucks have the highest amount of total injuries and highest amount of injuries to starters. Not too surprising, but undeniably depressing. To put this in further perspective: The Bucks only had 42 missed games from key players all last season. I would say that's relatively healthy considering many teams have that many injuries already and we're not even halfway through the season yet.
The run for healthiest team in the league would be between the Lakers and Spurs, who have most of their injured games eaten up by one player each, James Anderson for the Spurs and Andrew Bynum for the Lakers. And it would only make sense that they are two of the top teams. Other teams whose injury-game numbers have been dramatically changed by one player include the Jazz with Mehmet Okur and Minnesota with Jonny Flynn.