Basketball: What are playoff teams going to go?

It seems that every team is suffering the injury bug. Jermaine O'Neal (Out the rest of the season), Jamaal Tinsley (Out Indefinately), Ron Artest (Suspended Indefinately), Jonathon Bender (Out for the rest of the season) and the Indiana Pacers // Tim Duncan and the San Antonio Spurs (Out the rest of the season) // Jerry Stackhouse and the Dallas Mavericks (Out till mid-April) // Juwan Howard and the Houston Rockets (Out till mid-April) // Brad Miller (Out till mid-April), Bobby Jackson (Out the rest of the season) and the Sacramento Kings // Antawn Jamison and the Washington Wizards (Out Indefinately).....Those are just the big names. Just think of what they can do in the playoffs without these players.....It will be hard.

Its always going to be hard for a team to win without some of their most talented players, but winning doesn't revolve around one player, people seem to forget that, its about playing as a team.

However, the teams that are lucky enough to avoid major injuries in most sports are the ones that end up holding th etrophies at the end.

I look back at the Jazz the year the season was cut short due to the strike. After 2 years of losing to the Bulls in the championship series, they were primed to win it all, with MJ retiring, while they retained thier core of players (Malone, Stockton, Hornaceck, Ostertag, Keefe, Russell, et al.)

The strike shortened season got the better of the old guys, though, and the injury bug took hold, they got eliminated early in the playoffs that year. And young buck Duncan held the trophy at the end of the season.

so yeah, injuries do play a large part.

Injury status can do a lot for a team. It can make you or break you and that is the case for any team. But you also have to look at it this way, teams might feel down about there star players being down but when it comes to playoffs, it is all about competition...