Common Injuries in Basketball

Basketball is acclaimed to be unstoppable in its rise as one of the cornerstones of human sports. Still, whether you are playing for the neighborhood league or the famous NBA, you are still prone to injury regardless. There are two kinds of injuries that you could get from playing basketball (or any sport, for that matter): overuse injuries and traumatic injuries.

The overuse type of injury is caused by giving stress to a body area over and over until it finally can't take the damage and begins to hurt. An example for an overuse injury is the patellar tendinitis or otherwise known as the "jumper's knee", which manifests itself as a persistent pain in the tendon located just under the kneecap. Another more common injury among basketball players is the Achilles tendinitis, which is caused by the tendon connecting the muscles in the calf's posterior to the bone of the heel sustaining damage. This is primarily manifested by pain—this time it is above the heel and specifically in the injured player's leg posterior. This is even made worse by the fact that the Achilles tendon has the tendency to get torn, which could be treated via surgery or by therapy. Lastly, basketball players tend to overuse their shoulder tendons, primarily its rotator cuff which is composed of four muscles. These tendons serve as an intermediary between the muscles and the shoulder bone, but with overuse they become inflamed and painful. This is particularly more prevalent among those who do repeating overhead activities like shooting the ball.

Traumatic injuries, on the other hand, are the ones you most likely see in the television broadcasts, because these are caused by sudden forces that ultimately result in injuries. Commonly, this type of injury is sustained via collision, and the most frequent of these ones is the jammed fingers, and its severity could be from a minor ligament injury to a fractured finger. This could be treated by using a splinter and may heal on its own. Another common injury is the tearing of muscles and for basketball players, the large muscles of the legs are the most susceptible. As a preventive measure, a basketball player should always stretch their thighs and calves properly and subject themselves to warm-up exercises well before playing the game. The key to having a fun and injury-free basketball matches is to be careful and take several preventive measures.