NBA Iron Men 2015

After a season beset by injuries, including a few untimely ones in the playoffs, along with the trend of rest for healthy players to keep them fresh for the playoffs, the NBA Iron Man appears to be on the decline. Yet there are still a few who keep that fire burning. While rosters are filled with millions of dollars in back-up plans, there’s a unique value in a player who hasn’t missed a game from an injury in years.

The active leader in consecutive games played and the Iron Man of 2015? It’s DeAndre Jordan, recently retained by the Clippers. He held the title last year, which is fairly impressive — it’s tough to stay on these lists. Westbrook used to hold the iron man title, but he’s missed about a third of the possible regular season games over the past couple years. Klay Thompson was right on DeAndre’s heels, but he missed some time. Robin Lopez looked like the healthy Lopez, but he fractured his hand as Portland’s season unraveled. Dwight Howard used to be an iron man, and he can’t seem to stay healthy now. These guys drop like flies, and you don’t last long at the top.

Referring to the table below, there are only a handful of guys with at least two seasons without missed games in the regular season — it’s seven, and there were eleven guys last season. Brandon Bass isn’t a player people associate with durability, but he hasn’t missed a game since 2012[1. Bass played 81 games during the 2013 season, but Boston and Indiana had a game canceled that year due to the Boston Marathon tragedy.]. Part of the value of being an iron man is being there when your team is coming apart, and Tristan Thompson was there, healthy of course, as Varejao and then Love got injured for Cleveland. Lillard has never missed a game in his professional career, and at three seasons running it’s significant.

Jeff Green’s an example of why I do a bit of research and don’t just search for players who string together 82 game seasons — he missed a game in 2013 because one was canceled[2. Jeff Green was also on the Boston team with Bass, where a game was eliminated after the Boston Marathon tragedy.] and played only 78 games this past season because of a midseason trade, as he sat out a little while during the process before he was traded and until he could be cleared. Mozgov is a name few people would expect, but even with his mammoth frame he hasn’t suffered a significant injury in a while. Finally, Ben McLemore hasn’t missed a game two years into his career, but sadly he’s been nearly forgotten playing for Sacramento.

If you’re trying to find a pattern between those players, good luck. The only consistent one is age, but that’s not new information. Four of the seven players are big men, and a couple of them are known for constantly jumping and crashing the boards. These guys aren’t stand in the corner types — Jeff Green’s game is based on athleticism, Lillard is a high scorer who gets in the lane frequently, and McLemore is known for his dunking. DeAndre Jordan is the poster child here for the confusion: how is the most durable player the guy known for jumping high and dunking from everywhere, grabbing every board he can, and flying at everything on defense to block shots. It doesn’t make any sense he’s the iron man right now, and it doesn’t tie into some grander theme of how players today get injured more often because they’re much more active. Humans are relentless pattern-seekers, but the issue is murky and pareidolia-induced theories often crumble upon closer examination.

Concurrently, the idea that today’s players are weaker and thus get injured more often is misguided because it’s assuming the game played in the exact same way as this era. That assumption is wrong; however, although it’s reasonable to say that playing with more movement and in faster bursts of speed while jumping higher would be worse for the body, it’s tough to tease out how important that is, with the shining example of DeAndre Jordan. There’s also the related theory that the prevalence of the pick-and-roll is leading to more injuries, but Stockton and Malone are two of the most impressive iron men and they ran that play together frequently.

The “number one” iron man in NBA history is, of course, A.C. Green, who played 1,192 games in a row, or 1,336 if you count the playoffs. But Andre Miller had his streak ended just recently, and if you don’t count a suspension he received from knocking Blake Griffin to the ground he ended up at 873 games in a row (925 playoffs) — and the streak ended with coach’s decision from a dispute on the team. Andre, with a little more restraint, could have seriously challenged A.C. Green. Now we have DeAndre getting close to 400 games in a row, which is roughly where Westbrook ended up.

These iron man streaks are still possible, but it takes some luck, good genes, and perseverance.