Basketball requires many important skills, such as shooting, dribbling, defending, rebounding, and passing. Aside from these basketball-specific talents, agility, acrobatic ability, speed, and endurance are all valuable assets in the game. These skills can also lead to major injuries like broken bones, concussions, or trouble breathing.
Despite its widespread popularity, basketball is one of the most dangerous sports due to its fast-paced, high-contact nature. Injuries like sprained ankles, knee ligament tears, and fractures are common. This is caused by rapid movements, collisions, and jumping, which strain players’ bodies. Injury is one reason most basketball players quit after a while. They mostly quit playing because of pressures from the environment around them.
In sports, if anything will make a player go into an early retirement, it’s injury. Another way to argue the fact that athletes are deserving of their earnings is the risk of injuries – life-threatening ones at that. Athletes get injured, and their careers start to go downhill from there. Another reason why most NBA players quit is because they don’t get paid even if they have an injury if they do not sign a contract, which causes them to lose lots of money. For professional athletes, injuries can be life- and career-altering events, and unfortunately, researchers have shown rising trends in injury rates ranging from 12.4%1 to 15%2 within the National Basketball Association (NBA). Injuries can bring negative consequences for many stakeholders. Chris Bosh made the Hall of Fame, but his career was cut short at age 31 due to blood clots and he could have been even higher in the historic rankings if those never came around. Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Dwyane Wade, and Steve Nash, all had elite careers shortened or lessened by serious injuries. Many people fear sports that take difficult skills because of the outcome.