A medical study published in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine claims to have found a correlation between Achilles tendon tears and an uptick in minutes played during the 10-to-15 games prior to the injury, writes Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. However, the NBA has disputed the study, stating that its own internal research shows no connection between Achilles tears and minutes played.
“Over the past year, we have worked to better understand Achilles tendon injuries through a tendon health working group and additional research,” the league’s director of sports medicine, Dr. John DiFiori, told The Athletic. “While we welcome continued learnings, we believe the recent paper on this topic has important methodological limitations.
“Our own extensive review of league data to date, conducted with independent epidemiologists and consultants, spanned the 2012/13 season to the present and found no relationship between Achilles tendon injuries and minutes played before injury. We remain committed to advancing research that informs player health, performance, and injury prevention.”
The increase in Achilles tears became a topic of conversation during the spring and summer of 2025, after Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum, and Tyrese Haliburton all sustained the injury during the postseason. Those were the fifth, sixth, and seventh players to suffer Achilles tears in 2024/25. Thankfully, that trend didn’t continue in ’25/26 — just one player (Donte DiVincenzo) tore his Achilles last season.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- A.J. Williams, a 17-year-old five-star recruit from Georgia who was considered the top prospect in the high school class of 2028, has reclassified to the class of 2027, he tells ESPN’s Paul Biancardi. ESPN now has the 6’7″ wing ranked seventh on its list of 2027’s top 100 recruits, with Yann Kamagate taking over the top spot for 2028. Williams will be eligible for the NBA draft as early as 2028.
- As Amanda Christovich of Front Office Sports details, after ruling that the NCAA can’t prohibit college athletes who exhausted their fourth year of eligibility this spring from using a fifth year of eligibility this fall, Colorado district court judge Charlotte Sweeney issued an order clarifying that several restrictions remain in place. For instance, an athlete who is over the age of 24 or has already signed a professional contract isn’t eligible for a fifth year, and the NCAA’s transfer rules still apply. The NCAA has already applied to overturn Sweeney’s ruling, which makes several unsigned 2026 second-round picks eligible to return to school.
- The jury selection and the start of the trial for the rigged poker game case that includes former Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups as a defendant has been moved from November 2 to Nov. 30, tweets Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic. According to Vorkunov, the trial is scheduled to go until December 18 but could end up running longer if necessary.
- In a pair of informative stories for ESPN.com, Bobby Marks considers whether 10 notable storylines of the offseason are fact or fiction and looks ahead to the stories that could dominate the NBA discourse during the 2027 offseason.
