Rash of NBA injuries a reminder of the durability of Bulls' dynasty - Chicago Tribune

This weekend brought more injury news for big-name stars.

The Celtics announced Kyrie Irving will be sidelined three to six weeks following a left knee procedure, while the Warriors said Stephen Curry will be re-evaluated in three weeks after suffering a Grade 2 MCL sprain in his left knee.

And this is on top of Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, Gordon Hayward, DeMarcus Cousins, John Wall, Kevin Love and Mike Conley either out for the season or missing substantial time.

This makes the Bulls' health during their 1990s dynasty all the more impressive. Think about it: Until Scottie Pippen's foot surgery that limited him to 44 games in 1997-98, he had missed six games in the five previous title seasons and played in all 82 games three times.

Michael Jordan proved even more durable. He played in all 82 games in four of the six championship seasons and missed just six games in the other two seasons combined.

They weren't alone. B.J. Armstrong played all 82 games in all three seasons of the first three-peat. John Paxson, Steve Kerr and Ron Harper each posted an 82-game season. Horace Grant missed just 10 combined games during the first three-peat.

That's a lot of something — luck, toughness, preventative measures, you name it.

"After Game 6 in '98, Scottie went into (back) surgery like a month later," Chip Schaefer said. "So our luck was maybe about to run out if we had to go to a Game 7."

Schaefer served as the Bulls' head athletic trainer then and was rehired by the franchise in May 2016 as its director of sports performance. Along those lines, Schaefer, who has a doctorate in health science, is charged with devising programs bridging sports medicine and sports performance to, among other things, best maximize injury prevention.

"Everyone — all teams and the league — is throwing a lot of effort and energy into figuring out these things," Schaefer said. "Everyone is looking for answers. I don't think anybody has found them yet. The league has looked at work-to-rest ratio and work doses, whether it's games or practices. People are trying to fine-tune that as much as they can to find optimal levels of work and rest. But it's bigger than a quick sound bite.

"There are a lot of variables. There have been a lot of changes over the last 20 years. If you talk to players back in that era and the 70s and 80s and 90s, a lot of them came up through their childhoods playing multiple sports. A lot of the guys now are the result of the AAU process, which is a whole heck of a lot of basketball. We do a lot with them in the summertime when back then the offseason was truly an offseason. The league and teams are trying to determine if there's any causation that can be looked at there."

Schaefer, who has more than 25 years of experience in the NBA and has worked for 11 title teams, noted how in his last season with the Lakers, 2010-11, six players played in all 82 games.

"The speed the game is played at now, you're at a higher risk of getting hurt," he said. "There is something to look at with pace and tempo. But I do think luck is the biggest thing. You look at what happened with Steph Curry, that was just bad luck."

Indeed, JaVale McGee rolled into Curry's knee on an otherwise benign play.

But this is less a look at today's measures and more an appreciation of the durability during the dynasty. Former general manager Jerry Krause used to always credit strength and conditioning coach Al Vermeil too.

"I remember the first Finals against the Lakers in '91, James Worthy sprained his ankle in the Western Conference finals against Portland. So they came in less than healthy," Schaefer said. "I later worked for the Lakers, so I knew they always looked back on that and thought if James was healthy, it might've been different."

Of course, given the prodigious talent and competitiveness of Jordan, a healthy Worthy might not have mattered. And Jordan's competitiveness even crossed into pain tolerance.

"If guys were inclined to maybe sit a game, they'd get those daggers from him," Schaefer said. "He would play with anything. That was his nature."

kcjohnson@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kcjhoop

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