"The 2025-26 season began, more or less, a few minutes into the last game of the 2024-25 season, during Game Seven of the N.B.A. Finals, when Tyrese Haliburton, the Indiana Pacers star, stood above the arc with the ball, planted his right foot as he began to drive, and then sprawled to the ground. As the Oklahoma City Thunder scooped up the ball and raced past Haliburton, who lay face down, he pounded the ground."
"At the time he was injured, in June, Haliburton was playing in his ninety-sixth game since the season began. After the injury, it's unlikely that he'll play in any games this season at all. The impact of his injury has been devastating to the Pacers' prospects, and he's hardly the only key player on the team to miss significant time so far, with disastrous results. The Pacers went from winning the Eastern Conference this past summer to starting this season with a dismal 4-16 record."
"Jayson Tatum, of the defending-champion Boston Celtics, tore his Achilles in the final minutes of an intense playoff game against the New York Knicks last season, ruining his team's hopes of a repeat. There's a small chance that he'll return this spring, but in the off-season the Celtics blew up its core of expensive veteran players anyway, acknowledging that their hopes of winning this season were wrecked."
Higher speed and intensity in the game have coincided with several catastrophic injuries to star players. Tyrese Haliburton tore his Achilles in Game Seven after playing his ninety-sixth game since the season began and is unlikely to play this season, a loss that plunged the Pacers from Eastern Conference winners to a 4-16 start. Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles late in the playoffs, wrecking championship hopes and prompting roster changes. The Houston Rockets acquired Kevin Durant but then lost starting point guard Fred VanVleet to a torn A.C.L., further altering competitive outlooks.
Read at The New Yorker
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