Despite LeBron James’ imminent return, the NBA’s star crisis worsens

From a league-wide star availability standpoint, the return of the King can’t come soon enough. Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James has been nursing a sciatica injury for the opening month of the season and missed the team’s first 15 games. On Monday, Lakers coach JJ Redick said the four-time MVP was “TBD” for Tuesday’s home tilt against the Jazz and the team officially listed him as questionable.

Hopefully, LeBron’s imminent return helps reverse a startling trend across the league. The NBA’s star availability problem has somehow worsened this season. The latest blow to the league’s elite came on Monday afternoon when, first, it was reported that Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama will be sidelined for at least a few weeks with a calf strain, and the Grizzlies announced Ja Morant is expected to miss time with a calf strain of his own. Then, Giannis Antetokounmpo exited Monday night’s Bucks game early due to a groin injury.

Tuesday night was supposed to be Wembanyama’s much-anticipated debut on NBC, taking on Morant and the Grizzlies. Two weeks ago, the league flexed the game onto national television after Wemby’s dominant start. Both Wembanyama and Morant are now out, joining the sidelines along with Rookie of the Year winner Stephon Castle (hip) and the Spurs’ No. 2 overall pick Dylan Harper (calf).

All told, NBA stars have already missed over 200 games this season due to injury or illness, doubling the total we saw at this point two years ago. The NBA’s official star designation in the league’s player participation policy stipulates that a star player is one who has made an All-Star or All-NBA team in any of the previous three seasons. This season, 45 players meet that criteria, which means that, on average, NBA stars have already been sidelined by about five games each.

For a league fighting the image that star players aren’t playing enough, this season’s power outage is especially alarming. In 2023-24, with the first year of the mid-season tournament seeming to motivate its biggest names to suit up, star players played 87.2% of its games by this juncture of the season (12 games in). Last season, it dipped to 82.6%. This season, the bottom has fallen out, with star participation falling to 67.6%.

Put another way, in the opening month of the season, star players used to miss only one out of every nine or 10 games. Now, on average, it’s one out of every three games.

Of greatest concern for the league, stars played in just 56% of their teams’ 12th games this season, continuing a downward trend as we head toward Thanksgiving. The league is dangerously close to having the distinction of having over half its stars in street clothes on any given night in the NBA, something we typically don’t see until the last week of the season as teams rest their stars for the postseason. Now, we’re seeing it in November.

What’s causing the trend?

It’s not just the season-ending injuries

The NBA has faced an unusual number of major leg injuries that have jeopardized the entire seasons of some of its brightest stars. Achilles injuries have sidelined Jayson Tatum, Tyrese Haliburton and Damian Lillard, while Kyrie Irving is nursing a torn ACL that will sideline him for the foreseeable future.

But even if we remove those four players from the sample, as stars whom we knew were going to miss most if not all of this upcoming season, the overall trend remains concerning. Taking Tatum, Haliburton, Lillard and Irving out of the equation, star players are still playing only 75% of the games in the opening month of the season, down considerably from the 87% rate just two seasons ago. Even with a generous cut of the data, this isn’t just about the Achilles and ACL tears skewing the numbers.

Paul George and LeBron James making their season debuts should breathe some life into the overall system, but OKC’s Jalen Williams and Miami’s Tyler Herro, both 2025 All-Stars, have yet to suit up for their teams. Zion Williamson, Trae Young and Anthony Davis have barely played.

We’re one month into the season and a huge number of teams have yet to see what their full complement of stars looks like this season. Though it sounds absurd, the 17 teams with multiple stars have seen their full complement of stars play in the same game in just 31.8% of all contests this season.

If we lower the bar to the bare minimum, it doesn’t get much better. Only nine of those 17 teams with multiple stars have had a full complement of star players available together in at least one game this season. Of those nine teams, only five of them have had their stars available in the same game for the majority of the season — Houston, Golden State, Memphis, Sacramento and New York. And within that group, only one team has seen its two stars play in every game this season.

That team would be the Houston Rockets with Alperen Sengun and Kevin Durant having not missed a single game this season. But even they would argue that they’ve lost starpower this season. In September, the team learned it would be without 2022 All-Star Fred VanVleet for perhaps the entire season after he tore his ACL. The point guard fell off the NBA’s official star designation list because his all-league appearance is too outdated to qualify.

If we broaden the list to include players who were named to the 2022 All-Star and All-NBA teams, the problem looks even more dire, partly because they themselves can’t seem to stop getting injured. Beyond VanVleet, who is out for the season, Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball, one of the league’s most popular players by All-Star fan vote, has missed nearly half this season with an ankle injury. New Orleans point guard Dejounte Murray missed 18 of the Pelicans’ first 49 games last season before tearing his Achilles in January and hasn’t taken the floor since.

Thankfully, Ball returned on Monday night, but he was without his co-pilot Brandon Miller once again. Charlotte fans hoping to see them play together have been let down in 137 of the 178 games since Miller was drafted No. 2 overall in the 2023 draft.

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If players don’t hurry back, they won’t be seeing All-NBA lists this season. Hurry back too soon and they might risk aggravating an injury. Therein lies the dilemma of the NBA’s new policy.

League awards in jeopardy

Hoping to stem the tide of stars increasingly missing games due to load management, the NBA instituted a rule in 2023 to require players to play at least 65 games to be eligible for postseason awards like All-NBA, Defensive Player of the Year and Most Valuable Player. But rather than fans seeing star players suit up more often, the trend has reversed in recent years.

We haven’t reached Thanksgiving and only 13 of the 45 stars can say they haven’t missed a game this season — an accomplishment that used to be commonplace for the league’s biggest names. Otherwise healthy up to this point in the season, Jalen Brunson, Cade Cunningham and Wembanyama are the latest stars to catch the injury bug.

Several players would be in jeopardy of losing postseason award eligibility if they don’t return soon. OKC’s Williams (wrist) would have to return by Sunday’s game against the Portland Trail Blazers or else he’ll be ruled out for making a second All-NBA and All-Defensive team appearance.

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For Herro, who was set to miss 8-12 weeks with an ankle injury suffered in September, he needs to come back by Monday if he wants to still qualify for a supermax extension with the Miami Heat. The 2024-25 All-Star did not agree to terms on an extension in the offseason before his ankle injury saddled the start to his pivotal season.

On the other end of the spectrum, MVP candidates like Luka Dončić and Anthony Edwards are hovering just below the required 65-game pace. With Wembanyama sidelined with a calf strain, the MVP and Defensive Player of the Year races just opened up.

Wembanyama joins Jrue Holiday, Morant, Harper and Davis as high-profile players who are suffering from calf injuries in the early going. Though it’s too early to draw any grand conclusions about what’s causing the spike of injuries to stars in the opening weeks, it follows a larger parallel track of veteran star injuries and increased pace in the league.

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This past postseason we saw speed in the NBA reach levels we hadn’t seen in decades, if ever. Golden State head coach Steve Kerr told me at the end of May: “The most important point of all of this is the pace and space and how much more mileage that players are covering. You see all these injuries … I don’t think players get enough rest anymore.”

The number of possessions has dialed up this season. The average pace in the opening month of the season has ticked up to around 101 possessions per 48 minutes this season, according to NBA.com tracking data, slightly increased from last season’s 99 possession rate at this point in the season. By comparison, it’s 10 possessions more per game than it was in 1997.

Is there a silver lining?

There does seem to be a flicker of good news in the overall injury data. Or at least, maybe some reason for hope. Jeff Stotts of InstreetClothes.com, the industry’s top injury tracker, has found that games lost due to injury for all players don’t seem to be significantly up across the league compared to last season. On Monday, Stotts reported that total games lost due to injury or illness reached 964 games, with 268 games added in the fourth week of the season. Last season, those same numbers were 968 and 272 respectively, per Stotts tracking.

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By the end of the season, Stotts reported that 2024-25 saw the most games lost due to injury or illness since he began tracking in 2005 — excluding games lost due to COVID-19 or health-and-safety protocols during the pandemic.

Any league stakeholders who were hoping that last season was an aberration have to be disappointed with the data so far. Or at least they were hoping for a big bounceback of health. Around this time last year, we reported on Yahoo Sports that injuries league-wide had increased 24% compared to 2023-24. Instead, the overall trend has stayed in line with the injury-ravaged 2024-25 season, with stars appearing to feel the brunt of the health decline.

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LeBron’s return should be celebrated by fans. But it’s a testament to the NBA’s star availability crisis that hope is hinging on a soon-to-be 41-year-old to carry the league into brighter, healthier times.