Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - How Does the New Strength and Conditioning Coach Help Luka Dončić and the Lakers? Jeff Stotts Explains...

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everyone, welcome to Lockdown Lakers for Thursday. Brian Komenetsky, Andy Komeneske, the Lakers have a new head of strength and conditioning. And he's Lucas guy. And speaking of Luca, what does this body transformation mean? We ask trainer Jeff Stotz. You know him from Twitter. You see them all over our site. He's going to answer all these questions next.

Starting point is 00:00:22 You are Locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast. Part of the Locked on Podcast Network. Your team every day. Thanks to everybody for making Lockdown Lakers first listen. every day, Monday through Friday, no matter how or where you get your podcast. This one's always free.

Starting point is 00:00:39 It is never behind a paywall. Locked on Lakers on YouTube, of course, is we're over 36,000 subscribers to the channel and Andy are all trying to figure out what this new health and conditioning and fitness and strength architecture means for the Lakers. We talked about it on Wednesday, showed the Lakers have a new guy in town, Jeremy Holsoppel. Used to be with the Mavericks.

Starting point is 00:01:01 He is Lucas guy. One of the reasons that we were, encouraged, quite frankly, that the Lakers have done a good thing, other than it obviously makes Luca happy, is that the reception from smart people was that the Lakers did something wise, including the guy we're going to talk to today. Jeff Stott's from, he's a certified athletic trainer and, you know, from in-streetclose.com, a go-to around the NBA regarding health and injuries.

Starting point is 00:01:29 So we'll get to that in just a second. I want to let people know that today's episode is brought to you by Fandul. Football season is around the corner. Visit the Fandual app Visit the Fandual app today and start planning your futures bet now. So Jeff is joining us and as I noted Jeff

Starting point is 00:01:44 when when this news came down you tweeted out that this was a great move for the Lakers. A massive W a massive W. I don't want to be the aggregators to start saying you said something different.

Starting point is 00:02:02 Why is this a massive but also hi, and thank you for coming. But why is this a massive win for the Lakers? So part of it is just the credentials that Jeremy brings with him. You know, he was a long-time athletic, or strength conditioning coach, working with Casey Smith and Dallas to form a medical staff that was highly respected, highly regarded, and did a very good job of what they were doing. During the time that Hulsapel was with the Mavericks,

Starting point is 00:02:32 The Mavericks ranked seventh in the league for fewest games lost due to injury over that span. So the entire time he was with the team. The Lakers over that span, 24th. So we were looking at a big difference in total games lost there. Over that same span, we talk about six top 10 finishes by the Mavs in terms of games lost, three top five finishes. So not only success, but sustained success. You couple that with the relationships he built spanning the end of the Dirk era

Starting point is 00:03:01 into that Luca Donchichera. He did a really good job of, you know, earning the trust of those star players. You saw, you've seen the reports that, you know, Luca was upset when he was let go, that, you know, he was a guy that Luca had bonded with. And so not only is this move proactive from what, what he can bring to the entire Lakers organization,

Starting point is 00:03:20 but it's a guy that, you know, when you sign Luca to that extension, you're thinking of the future. And bringing in a guy that's a Luca guy already is going to help set the table for him to have some sustained success. and hopefully some of the things we've seen this summer, not just be flashed in the pan, but something that is really something that's going to be with him for the entirety of his career moving forward.

Starting point is 00:03:38 There's been a lot of coverage post-Luca trade about the letting go of Holesoppel. You referenced Casey Smith, like all these different people who were part of the Mavericks medical and training staff. As you noted, they had a lot of positive success well respected. and then under new ownership and new basketball ops, Nico Harrison, they were all being let go. This reportedly was a source of tension for Luca. But were you surprised by this from the outside looking in?

Starting point is 00:04:13 Yeah, but just because, you know, those guys had become so integral in everything Dallas had done. You know, they had earned the respect of Mark Cuban. They had earned the respect of, you know, obviously the Dirk era. But, you know, you saw a guy like Casey Smith who was with Team USA. he was involved in free agency pitches. You've heard multiple players say he's one of the reasons they opted to come to Dallas. The Dallas training staff had a very well-respect regard amongst the players. And so we're seeing this more and more.

Starting point is 00:04:41 It's not just doubt. We're seeing this more and more in the NBA as a whole. When I was looking to get into the NBA and starting to do these things that I was doing, you had guys that had been there for decades. You look at a guy like Gary Vee with the Lakers, 32 years. You know, you talk about a legend. but, you know, someone that spanned eras. You're talking about being there for magic,

Starting point is 00:04:59 Kareem's end, all the way through the Kobe Shack era. And I was told, hey, if you want to be an NBA athletic trainer, you've got to get in and either hope someone dies or gets fired. And those things just didn't happen at that time. You had guys that were there for a long, long period of time. And I personally think some of that continuity leads to success. You look at some of the more successful staffs right now. It's guys that have been there for a long period.

Starting point is 00:05:25 It's not Will spending in San Antonio, Greg Farnham in Minnesota. Those staffs have been able to the Pacers, another group that's got a good group that's stuck together for a long period of time. That continuity is key. But over the last, I'd say decade, we've seen a shorter leash on the medical staffs and people are getting moved around more. They're losing their jobs very quicker. There's not a chance to always necessarily implement maybe their approach to things. Real quick, do you think that has anything to do at all with? or at least potentially, these ownership groups now in the modern NBA are increasingly run by venture

Starting point is 00:06:03 capital people, tech bros, stuff like that. And this is outside of their world. And they go about doing things very different. There's often a move fast and break things approach to, or certainly the culture, if nothing else. Do you think there can be a correlation between sort of modern NBA ownership and a lack of of patience or even trust with this stuff? Agreed because I think we've seen a turnover, a higher turnover in the front offices as well. You know, coaches and GMs and assistant GMs get turned over a lot quicker than I would say in previous years as past. And so a lot of times

Starting point is 00:06:40 you'll have someone in the front office coming in and looking for something to hang their hat on. And sometimes they allop to, hey, I'm going to hang my hat on medical staff, even if it's not necessarily something that they, because maybe they know somebody that they think they can do a better job and you know you go in thinking you can do this not understanding maybe some of the relationships that need to be there what goes actually into a medical staff you know yes it's a group that's often very delegated and everybody's doing their own little thing and I think sometimes it's oh we're doing too much you know there's too many people on staff when actually you know to be I think mba staffs across the lake could probably be expanded even more so than what we already have

Starting point is 00:07:18 even though there's a smaller roster than a sport like football or baseball So one of the things that you talked about it before that the, you know, the, this, the man, the, the, the games missed, the, the, the Mavs and then, you know, relative to the Lakers of the same period time. So like, like two questions here. First is what exactly does the, the strength and conditioning coach do? Like what are the, like, where, what are their responsibilities? How do they fit into the larger health architecture of a team? And then is that sort of games missed thing, are injuries, the right measurement? Like, how do we know when these groups are doing a good job? So your first part is it kind of looks a little bit different for every team because everybody has a certain hierarchy of the way they structure it. A lot of the groups that work synergistically well have multiple faceted.

Starting point is 00:08:15 They include the massage therapist or the dietitian or the nutritionist, the athletic trainers, the assistant ATs, some have physical therapists on staff now. Then strength and conditioning, sometimes they're not even called strength and conditioning coaches anymore. They're called performance enhancement specialists or something. You know, something, it depends on what the title is. But at the end of the day, I think we used to think all strength and conditioning coaches did it was, you know, work on getting big and getting muscular.

Starting point is 00:08:38 But really, that's a huge part of injury prevention. What they're trying to do is prepare the body for the wear and tear of what the season looks like. So yes, they might be lifting, but it might not be to get stronger. it might be to literally mitigate risk. And really that's what I always tell people is the job of the health staff is not to keep everybody injury free because that's impossible. Everybody's going to have an injury inevitably. It's going to happen.

Starting point is 00:09:01 But you're trying to mitigate that risk. We are in the business of injury risk mitigation. So what can we do to reduce the chances that something happens? And most of the times the ones that are the problematic ones are your soft tissue injuries. You know, you can't control if a guy gets elbowed in the face and breaks his nose has a facial fracture and has to miss time. There's no exercise you could have done to prevent that from happening. There's not anything you can do like that.

Starting point is 00:09:23 What you're trying to do is really understand the wear and tear of what that looks like. On a day-to-day basis, you know, you've got guys that, okay, we're monitoring their workload. And I think the term load management kind of got lumped in here and then suddenly got given a bad name. Really, what we're looking at with load management is trying to avoid spikes in how much work these guys are doing. And how can we offset that. Okay, a guy didn't play today. that doesn't mean he gets to go home and go to bed. Sometimes those guys go get a practice in.

Starting point is 00:09:50 Sometimes those guys go get a lift in because they didn't play as many minutes. Okay, today you did play more than expected. We're going to scale back. And it's a fluid process that involves extreme communication between the athletic trainers, the physical therapists, and in your training staff as far as strength and conditioning goes. As far as metrics go, I think games lost is a good one to use because that's the one that impacts everybody. But it's hard, due, because a game loss for a Luca or a LeBron James is different than a games lost for Vanderbilt or a Rui Hachamora, not to diminish those guys' value. But we do look at different metrics.

Starting point is 00:10:25 We look at things like salary lost, okay? Generally speaking, the higher players have a higher salary. And you want those more expensive guys to be on the court because you've invested that money in them. We also look at things like, you know, some more metrics, you know, above replacement player level, stuff like that. And then minutes lost as well. okay, you know, we lost 82 games to this guy who sat up the season, but he was only projected to play 10 minutes for us anyway. So that's not as impactful as even, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:50 10 games of LeBron James or Lucas sitting is. So there's different ways to do it. And I think you've got to look at it, those multifaceted approach to get a better idea of what we're doing. So I always try to. And then there's always the thing that one injury can derail what it looks like. You know, like if you have a guy that suffers of offseason injury and misses 82 games, even if he's a bench player, that's a two games lost.

Starting point is 00:11:10 That's not necessarily fair either. So we look at it from a different angle, so it's not necessarily one thing that we pinpoint, but, but, you know, look at it from multiple influences. So we'll, after the break, want to get into a little bit more with sort of looking at Luca, looking at LeBron and, you know, what goes into keeping guys like this available at the different stages of their career. So we'll look into all of those things next. Lockdowne Lakers is brought to you by Fandual. August 26 is officially FanDuel. Futures Day, a brand new holiday for football fans who live for bold predictions and preseason hunches for just 24 hours, August 26th.

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Starting point is 00:12:18 You could also crown your Super Bowl champion in August. I actually think this is the year Buffalo finally breaks through the long-suffering bills and they win a Super Bowl. Visit the Fandual app today. Start planning for your futures bets now because Futures Day is one day, one day only. Fandual play your game. All right. So one last thing on this before we get to to Luke, When you think about like these questions of measurement, how do you factor in certain players with maybe longer injury histories? Like if a guy shows up into your program and he has had three or four or five seasons of, you know, bad injury issues, do what, how do the, the strengthening coach, the rest

Starting point is 00:13:09 of that team, how do they typically try to like work together or whatever it is to bring people back to health or at the very least? So how do you kind of measure, like factor that sort of thing in when trying to decide they're doing a good job? If they can boost their minutes by like 20 percent, is that considered a win? Like there are so many variables that go into roster health. That's the part that I find fascinating is understanding how they're doing a good job. The Lakers clearly don't think they've landed on a formula that works because they've had 11 billion people doing this since the beginning of the Rob Polinka era. and they haven't found one that works.

Starting point is 00:13:46 And so what are they looking for and what's been missing? Would it help if the strength and conditioning coach read the alchemist more, Jeff? That seems to be something Rob responds to. They can't seem to land on a formula that works. Well, and I think that's one reason why I was excited about this hire is I think it's the first sign of trying to build a sustained program there. I think it's the first kind of step in the right direction. I think hiring Dr. Vanessa Brooks last year was a step in the right direction as well. someone with that that knows that has proven success working with a successful staff like Oklahoma

Starting point is 00:14:19 City and then it does take time to implement some of these programs as well so you know I think the big thing that that people tend to think of that are you know the bad rap is okay so you have an ankle sprain so what we do well you can't take a cookbook approach with this stuff every player is different so well we what what I do is we have a player coming we're doing we will play evaluation we look at that injury history we look we take that into consideration consideration. Okay, this is going to play a role. One of the best indicators for future risk of injury is previous entry. So we know that's a risk factor. So this guy is going to already be one we're going to pay particular attention with in the weight room, in minutes, in distribution

Starting point is 00:14:57 of offseason. Is there something we can do with his diet that can help offset some of that, those things? And then we start kind of doing other, you know, in-house stuff directly with the player as far as like biomechanical measurements. Are we measuring things like his dorsiflex? in his ankle. Are we measuring what's it look like when he squats? What's it look like when he does a single leg squat? And are there any underlying factors that might have been attributed to those previous injuries that we can now correct and help, you know, reduce the chances of something else happening down the road? It's a pretty complex issue and it takes time, which is why I'm telling you, it's, I think it would be better to expand staffs because you can almost get a one-on-one with each guy

Starting point is 00:15:35 and then you move on. And you see some of the guys that have had those longer sustained sex, have those, those athletic trainers that come with them, that follow around and then know that individual player well. And yes, it sometimes can create conflict between training staffs, but at the same time, the good groups are going to work with those people and help and help do things that are appropriate and help. And you want to have communication. Communication is an underrated aspect of player health and making sure everybody's on the same page. You mentioned you kind of in that answer, the couple other hires of Lakers have made over the last year or so. They brought in a new trainer, Vanessa Brooks, I believe, is her name.

Starting point is 00:16:13 like a new like a medical director, uh, Dr. Sims, I think is the person that you had mentioned there. Like, so you see this as sort of really actually part of building that like all of the,

Starting point is 00:16:26 those people as far as I know, I haven't gone anywhere. Like they're continuing to add in your mind good people to this part of the basketball architecture. Correct. And that's that's, you know, we,

Starting point is 00:16:39 we kind of do like a coaching tree like we do in like, like like football or other places where you're, you follow that head coach and you start to like realize that a lot of the successful things are branching off of other other organizations as well they've spent time as the assistant here and then they get a chance to be to run their own staff things like that and so for a long time was phoenix phoenix was the model of success in the NBA for for medical staffs and then you had a bunch of people come off that utahs got some of them went to utah kaysmith who's now with the next but with the mavericks for a long time started out in phoenix and learned and kind of carried over and so you see these

Starting point is 00:17:11 kind of branches all over the NBA as far as like starting to actually get a chance to build things. And that's where hiring someone like Dr. Brooks coming in, hiring now Holesopel and all those other steps are steps in the right direction. And then if we can get that group to stay together and not overreact, you know, say something does happen this season, knock on wood for the Lakers. Let's make sure that it's not an overreaction to, okay, well, this didn't work. Let's try something else again. Sometimes it takes some time to implement your program and get players to understand. And that's the other thing is we didn't really hinted at is when the player turnover is high too, that can be hard because, you know, for a guy like Luca making a change midseason, he's coming to a new training staff with new potential ideas and new expectations. And maybe they have this technique or this treatment option or modality at their disposal and they didn't have it over here.

Starting point is 00:17:58 How do we catch up? What do we do? What do you like? That kind of thing. And it's hard to do on the fly. And that's why I do think continuity is key here. I have already seen a lot of Laker fans respond to this news with great. So the Lakers hired the guy that let Luca get fat.

Starting point is 00:18:16 Awesome move. Your response, Jeff Stats, too, this reaction. So, you know, I think it's really, like, and you're talking to a guy that was born and raised in Dallas. I had to console my teenage daughter as she cried when Luca got traded. You know what I mean? Like, I've watched Lucas' entire career. up close and you know i think for a guy like luca who's extremely talented at a young age it's just about building habits he's young and people forget that and they don't give him some leeway and so it takes

Starting point is 00:18:46 some time to kind of get some get some stuff through and i don't i don't think this was a you you heard luke already say like he likes whole soppel you know what i mean like that was his guy and so no i don't think well they would say that he likes holsoppel because he's the one who enabled to get fat Or to not to be fair to Luca, to not be as disciplined about this stuff as he should be, which could help with injury prevention, which we want to get into after this. But just the idea that this was one of Luca's enabler's as opposed to somebody that was really helping Luca. I would say look at more of Whole Suppler's work with Dirk and toward the tail in his career to get a better idea of, you know, it takes sometimes it takes a player buying in as well and you can you know you've got to get them

Starting point is 00:19:33 to buy what you're selling it and i think there are a lot of things that he did that that were i mean i do think the luca weight thing was a bit of an over exaggeration because up until last year he hadn't had really many big injuries that that calf strain on christmas day was the first i think setback significant setback he's had a bunch of little things don't get me wrong but i think that style of play i think you have to consider that look kind of being a little bit bigger isn't a bad thing either, you know, with the way he bowling balls into the lane and is able to bounce off and absorb contact. Like, sometimes you want a little bit of bowl on your players is what makes Lucas so dangerous. So I think, I think, I think, I think, Holopple,

Starting point is 00:20:13 and this new motivation from Luke, Luca is hopefully going to find a happy medium so that everybody can put him in the best position to be successful. And sometimes, I mean, we saw that in Dallas previously with Steve Nash, you know, when he left, that was a motivator for him. Cuban had said, we're worried about your back and how you're going to age. So what did he do? He recommitted himself to, you know, figuring things out. He did and had this, you know, obviously a two-time MVP follow-up seasons and prolonged career. And sometimes you just, you need that, that kick in the butt, you know, that little bit of extra motivation wherever it comes from. We've obviously been reveling a lot in Skinny Luca over in these parts. Revelling in it, taunting other fan bases, etc.

Starting point is 00:21:00 How much do you think, though, that this version of Luca physically, theoretically, mentally as well, can help him just in avoiding injuries? I think one of the things coming out of the draft that everyone marveled with Luca was not only his ability to go at a high tempo. You heard people say he's deceptively fast, deceptively strong kind of thing. It's his deceleration. That ability to stop on a dime really can swerve himself around the basket to get those finishes. you still want that Luca, you want that guy. It's finding that happy medium because that start and stop can really take a toll on your lower extremities on those hamstrings, the calf, which is what we've seen with Luca.

Starting point is 00:21:41 And if he was carrying too much weight and still trying to do the same thing, that can be more stress and strain on those muscle groups. So maybe balancing back a little bit, losing some of that weight is going to be better to make him do those things that make him so successful. I mean, you watch the tape. Look at the tape from rookie year Luca to where he was the last couple of seasons. we've got to find that balance. And I think Lucas still, you know, as a young, young man,

Starting point is 00:22:04 still trying to find that balance himself. Like, what do we, what do I need to do? And I think that, again, they're putting him in the best position to be successful, surrounding him with people that are going to help guide him along the way. Some of it takes some internal motivation and in going things like that and getting the player to do those things. But, you know, the big thing for me is we've seen a skinnier tan Luca before. It's what does he look like coming out of Eurobasket?

Starting point is 00:22:28 That's, that's my big, big question. it's is this going to be sustained success because he plays for the place for his national team that can be a lot of wear and tear and then what does he look like in that time off how is he going to adequately recover and i think that's some of the time where you've seen maybe his weight go up a little bit is in that like okay i know the NBA season is going coming around i just played i've got to take a break and maybe he vacations and and relaxes a little too much and just so finding that happy medium because because look i i i am stoked to see what he does i want as as as i as as much as painful as it for me to say, I want to see Luca Donchers be painful or successful

Starting point is 00:23:04 outside the Dallas Mavericks. You know what I mean? I want to see. Luke is so much fun to watch. You know, like he is just just one of those play. He's a generational talent and you hope that he's able to reach whatever his peak may be because we've seen it. We've seen he can have success, but I still think there's a crazy another level that he can get to. And that's insane to think about. You talked a little bit about sort of the short term value for for luka this year in terms of injury prevention and things like that what are the long-term prospects do you think for luka and the lakers if this transition that he's made in terms of genuine interest in his health genuine attention to these sorts of things if this sustains itself

Starting point is 00:23:46 what does it mean for his career over the long term it just means he's able to do more for longer you know that's the big thing is you know he's a guy that has the ball in his hands a ton so his his single season usage is going to be higher than a normal player, someone that doesn't have their ball, the ball in their hands as much. So if they're able to reduce some of the wear and tear on it, it's going to prolong things for his career, but also single season, right?

Starting point is 00:24:15 Like, I think the seasons you've seen him be in the Mavericks most successful were that late Western Conference run and the finals run against Boston, you saw him look fatigued in those final couple rounds. he looked tired like he had been carrying the load. And if you can really mitigate the load loss, you know, the load early on throughout the regular season, he's hopefully potentially going to be fresher for the postseason and a long sustained playoff front. That's the thing that I think gets overlooked a lot is the grind that is the season.

Starting point is 00:24:47 You know, that's one of the things that makes LeBron so impressive. It's not just the regular seasons that he's played. He's played probably, I don't even know how many seasons worth of playoff games. And so you can't just look at it isolated and you're like, oh, he's played 22 seasons. He's played 24, 25, 26 seasons when you look at the total games played. And so for a guy like Luca, that's where that's where legacies are made is in that last little bit. And hopefully the changes in the little twerks here and there and tweaks to his schedule and put him in a place that he can finish at the end of the season, not just, you know, be successful and have, you know,

Starting point is 00:25:23 a regular season MVP is great, but a finals MVP is even better. You just referenced LeBron. and the reality that he's probably played the equivalent of 26, maybe even 27 seasons when you count the playoffs. As a sports medicine guy, can you explain LeBron, like what we're seeing right now? The only thing I can say is LeBron James and Tom Brady are the anomalies. Like, they are not the norm. Like, I do think we're going to see guys have prolonged careers because they can do certain things now. But, you know, the game is changing a little bit, which is going to be harder on some of these younger guys. these guys are frees.

Starting point is 00:25:59 Like part of it is just a total commitment to their, their bodies, whether that's personal investment with who they have around them, what they do. It's self-sacrifice with what you're going to eat, what you're going to do, you know, but I can't,

Starting point is 00:26:15 if I could explain it, I would feel much better about my health because I'd be implementing the exact same things and I'm sitting here kind of, oh, I need to readjust. My back's getting a little stiff. And that's, you know,

Starting point is 00:26:25 it's amazing. He, when I am, constantly telling people, when I finally finalize what my injury matrix or metric is going to look like, it's going to be named after LeBron because the longevity thing for me is the most impressive thing. A few years ago, you were on the show with us, Jeff, and we were talking about Anthony Davis. And the question about him and injuries and the degree to which him playing center, which can be more physical against bigger bodies versus power forward, his preferred position,

Starting point is 00:26:57 much that actually matters. And my contention was then and now that one really has nothing to do with the other when it comes to Anthony Davis in injuries. I actually think some of it is just his body. Everybody's body isn't the same. But in some ways, you can't, you just can't account for it. But also, I think in the modern NBA, you are asking, in Anthony Davis's case, a big man, but everybody to cover so much ground at such a high speed, you become susceptible to soft tissue injuries, which has been a thing for Anthony Davis. And you agreed with that thought process then since I've started noticing this becoming more of a prevalent talking point. Is there anything the NBA can actually do about this? So I think the injury rates that continue to climb. We obviously saw a massive spike in

Starting point is 00:27:55 Achilles tendon tears last year. The, the prevent. ones in the postseason with Tatum, Lillard, and Tyresearch Halliburton going down. You know, those injuries are going to impact this season. They're going to have to keep those guys. Might not play at all this year. We might have three all-star caliber players, you know, miss 82 games. And I think a big portion of the increase in injuries is due to the increase in evolution of the game.

Starting point is 00:28:18 I think that's a big factor. It's one factor. I don't think it's the V factor. I think it is a major contributing factor. And I think you're right. I think at the end of the day, we're asking the players to do more. the game has evolved faster than the player's bodies. And even though we've improved our medical knowledge and approach and technique,

Starting point is 00:28:34 we haven't evolved as fast as the game as because it was like that. We went from, you know, Shaq and Kobe to Steph and Clay very, very quickly. And could you imagine asking Shaq to go guard the three-point line? What that would have done to him in terms of his body? I can imagine asking. Fair enough. And that's really what we're asking players from your point guard all the way to your center to cover more.

Starting point is 00:28:57 We want them to be able to shoot from the outside, but that also means they have to defend, so it's a lot more start and stuff. You're having to extend your defense to get a hand up, moving laterally, moving quickly, and those kinds of things put a lot of strain on the body. And so as we picked up, the body just hasn't adapted to that yet.

Starting point is 00:29:15 Plus you factor in things like early specialization for a lot of these guys coming in now where they've started playing AAU at fifth grade, sixth grade, and they stopped being multi-sport athletes at that age. They're not, they're specializing in basketball. They're not playing soccer and football and baseball and things like that where they're essentially rotating the tires on their body.

Starting point is 00:29:34 They've been loading their body in one pattern while they developed and grew musculoskeletalally, but then also in the, from from teenage to adult, adulthood and things like that. And it's a lot, you know, it's just too much wear and tear on the body. So, you know, I think the question of always going to be can the NBA look at presentially reducing the schedule. I think that would be one way to do it, but I don't think that's going to be one that's going to be well received by a lot of people that like those gate checks and things like that. But are the things that we can do at a grassroots level to help?

Starting point is 00:30:07 Can we start educating AAU teams? Can we provide more insight or facilities and things like that to understand what's going on? And how do we equip these guys coming in with food habits and start? And again, sometimes it comes down to the team level. Sometimes what can we do league-wide? So I still think there's a lot we can do and we're still trying to figure out exactly how to do it. And I think it's going to take, again, a multifacet approach at different levels to really feel that.

Starting point is 00:30:33 And let's not forget, guys, we're coming off of a pandemic, which changed everybody's schedule. And I know it's, you know, we're five years away, but, you know, the ripple effects of that, you know, shortened season, then the bubble, then the follow-up season, which was rushed. You know, we're still feeling some of that as far as, you know, the way that impact. to the players' bodies. It's actually a good transition to our last question here. Before we go, it's like, Luca is part of what got Luca in trouble last year was, you know, run to the finals where he played more minutes than anybody in the NBA.

Starting point is 00:31:11 And very short recovery time to go play for Slovenia, comes back into training camp. Like, there's no recovery time and no training time built in there. Obviously, he's had. an abundance of that this year, given where the Lakers went out of the playoffs, and we've seen the results there. LeBron injured at the end of the playoffs, but seems to, you know, have gone through a normal rehab, his normal summer, and we'll enter the season as he always does. You know, Jared Vanderbilt is not recovering from injury for the first time in a couple of seasons. When you look at like, how much of a difference does stuff like that make, to be able to

Starting point is 00:31:48 enter training camp with your roster not recovering still from previous injury as opposed to, you know, we hope that a guy is able to get back on the floor, you know, in the second week of training camp and start working his way back. It's something that we constantly try to remind people that you might have turned the page on last season, but the player in their body probably hasn't yet. So we've got to find that, again, the happy medium of what it's going to look like. like, you know, we often sell, you know, injuries don't have to just impact when we talked about those three guys and Tatea and Lillard and Halliburton, how that's going to have a carryover effect.

Starting point is 00:32:27 So when we start looking at things, where do we put those games lost, you know, because that wasn't this season. So we isolate those and those kinds of things. So I think the big thing is not, like I said, not taking a cookbook approach with each one of your players, looking at the single player, looking at the snapshot that they've created, what's their player profile look like and how do we address that? what does it look like going forward? Whether it's, you know, you play fantasy sports.

Starting point is 00:32:52 Is it, you know, what am I trying to, when I'm trying to draft the guy, what does it look like? like you can't just look at the season ahead. You've got to look at the whole picture. And so the other thing that we tend to focus on is so many people focus on the injuries that cost a player of time and that's all we really focus on. But when I built my database, my idea was I want to track everything. And LeBron was one of the guys.

Starting point is 00:33:13 So since 2005, 2006, how many injury, like, like incidences, do you think I've logged for LeBron? So we're looking at 20 years now. Three. I'll go, I'll go, I'll go 12. 200 plus. Oh. So that does not mean that each one of those resulted in missed time.

Starting point is 00:33:36 That's, okay, that's the trick, because I was thinking about missed time. And he missed so little time in any. And he missed a little, but, but I mean, I'm looking at his profile right now. I mean, so people forget, did you know he had a parodot tumor? tumor on one of his salivary glams taken off. I mean, stuff like that. People don't remember that because it didn't cost them a fantasy championship or didn't,

Starting point is 00:33:57 you know, LeBron always played. He played through these things. But I'm looking at it. Kobe was the same way. Kobe had a ton of injuries on his. But, you know, I think everybody remembers the end,

Starting point is 00:34:05 the Achilles and the rotator cuff. But like before that, he played through a done, but we're looking at ankle sprain, ankle sprain, hamstring, shin, ankle, ankle, wrist, nerve contusion, head injury, hamstring strain. These are all, I mean, that's 2011 to 2012. I haven't gotten to the last, you know, a little bit of stuff with LeBron.

Starting point is 00:34:24 So not only was Ron had injuries, he's been able to play through them or play with them. He's found a way to play through and adjust. And like the MCL spring that he had, you know, the end of the season was like one of the first times I remember like a big injury on his thing. But people are going to forget that too because it didn't cost him any time. You know what I mean? So that's the thing is we don't don't let it, don't let one injury necessarily.

Starting point is 00:34:47 lose side of the fact these guys play through or with a lot that people don't even realize he is jeff stott's he's certified athletic trainer you find his stuff at in streetclose dot com one of the go-to experts for injuries particularly and and and all this stuff around the NBA thanks so much for giving us a full show's worth of time we really appreciate appreciate you guys having me on even if it was the lakers and luka talk and i got to go tell my daughter how I actually did this without you know considering her feelings we won't tell if she's going to like max christie like max christie's a good young player but fair enough um all right locked on liquors on youtube as you can go hang out with over 36000 subscribers to the channel

Starting point is 00:35:31 we will see everyone tomorrow

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