Top 10 Significant Injuries 2000-2009

[Andrew]

Article.

1. Grant Hill
2. Gilbert Arenas
3. Chris Webber
4. Tracy McGrady
5. Anfernee Hardaway
6. Yao Ming
7. Shaun Livingston
8. Jonathan Bender
9. Jamal Mashburn
10. Amar'e Stoudemire

I'd have to agree for the most part. I remember when Grant Hill was The Next Big Thing and it looked like a major coup when Orlando signed both Hill and Tracy McGrady back in 2000. It's a shame that he lost all that time to injuries but it was nice to see him make a proper comeback in 2004/2005 and he did appear in all 82 games for the first time in his career last season. I'd probably put Penny slightly higher on the list, being another "Star of the Future" whose run as one of the league's elite ended way too soon.

I don't know about putting Amar'e on there given the way he's bounced back, though perhaps his absence for the better part of 2006 did prevent the Suns from taking that next step to the Finals and maybe even winning it all then and there. I'd put Livingston and Bender a little lower, though I think the severity and gruesome nature of Livingston's injury alone makes it significant.

[Dee.]

Maybe Jermaine O'Neal Could be in this list,He was pretty good Back in his Healthy Days.
Other Than That,i have no problems with the Top 10.

[Andrew]

He could probably slot in above Amar'e.

Come to think of it, you could probably make a case for Kevin Garnett this past season. His absence was a contributing factor to the Celtics' running out of steam in their bid to repeat as champions, after all.

[benji]

How the hell do you even make a list like this?

[Andrew]

Pretty easily, I would imagine.

[Dee.]

Greg Oden could be Here,but just because of all the Hype.
I Could Think of so Many players(Dikembe,Wade,Manu And others),with many Injuries,i guess its kind of hard to make a list like this.

[benji]

For a while I thought he was building up to something useful, now he's just scraping the bottom of the barrel early in the morning before deadline and drunkenly popping out whatever he gets from a random page search on b-r.com and trying to drag a top ten list out of the first result. (In this case he clearly landed on Grant Hill.)

Can't wait for the "top ten armbands" and "top ten socks" on the way.

[Andrew]

Chris Gatling gets my vote for the top spot on the eventual Top Ten Headbands list, simply because the league threw a hissy fit when he wanted to wear his number on it.

[Modifly]

You know something's wrong with Houston when two of their "star" players are on that list.

[jettdaking!]

i was thinking Elton Brand

[Dan's Brain]

Chris Gatling gets my vote for the top spot on the eventual Top Ten Headbands list, simply because the league threw a hissy fit when he wanted to wear his number on it.

Followed by Ben Wallace, purely for cause-stirring. And Cliff Robinson for doing it before it was cool again. And then ditching it thereafter.

This one is a weird list though. Most of the players listed there haven't just succumbed to one injury. They've had careers full of this, that and the other. If you want to pin-point single injuries, then you need to include KG on there. Also David Robinson's 96-97 injury, that ended up being the best to ever happen to the franchise.

[Andrew]

Robinson's injury certainly did turn out to be a blessing in disguise, though it wouldn't qualify for this list as it happened last decade. I'm guessing you were just using it as an example, though.

I think Dwyer is going for two concepts with the list; injuries that were significant in changing the course of a player's career (like Mashburn) and players whose inopportune injuries cost a legit contender a championship or even a decent shot at one. In that respect I agree a top ten is a little silly or certainly very difficult, as there are a lot of cases that could be sorted into those two categories.

[bowdown]

Can you please not post the top 10 listing in your post. i like to go through them from bottom to top in the article. thanks

[J@3]

I vote the opposite.

[Andrew]

Can you please not post the top 10 listing in your post. i like to go through them from bottom to top in the article. thanks

Most people don't seem to have a problem with it, so for the moment I'll have to decline.

[NovU]

If Yao doesn't come back at all, I wouldn't be surprised even if he atops the list, also considering his whole career was somewhat hampered by small and sometimes big injuries.

[Martti.]

Yao and T-Mac should be higher or at least Yao, like at #3 .
There's never a time when they're both healthy. If the two were had been 100%, I think they could have reached the Finals last year or the year before that.

[Modifly]

You talking about how Yao and T-Mac could have led the Rockets to the finals if they were healthy is simply killing me.

What could have been. Sigh...

[Andrew]

There's already talk that Yao could be back late in the season though, which is a stark contrast to some of the earlier reports but good to hear if that's the case. You don't want to see an athlete's career end like that...well, maybe some do but I for one don't. Nevertheless, with the time he's missed in recent years he certainly ranks somewhere on that list.