Injuries

Injuries happen on game days and only affect teams that played. They can happen during a game, mostly on contact plays like drives, post-ups and battles in the paint, and the injured player leaves the game with a proper substitution. They can also turn up after the game, when the day's knocks get sorted out.

Several things raise the risk:

• Fatigue. Tired players get hurt more, and a player worn down by recent games carries more risk.
• Conditioning and strength. Players with poor stamina, or who lack the body for contact, are more exposed.
• Fragility. Some players are simply more injury-prone than others, and fragile players also tend to get hurt worse. You can't see this until you run a medical. See Medicals below.

The commissioner can make injuries more or less common or more or less serious, or switch them off for the league.

Injuries range from minor tweaks to season-ending. The inbox alert and the player's card show what it is and roughly how long they'll be out.

• Day-to-day (minor injuries): the player can still suit up, but they play hurt. They're noticeably slower and weaker until they heal.
• Out (anything worse): the player can't play at all. A moderate injury goes back to day-to-day for the last couple of games before a full return.

Recovery counts down with your team's games, and the calendar has to catch up too. A player can't heal faster just because you have a stretch of days off.

Playing a day-to-day player is a gamble. A player who's already hurting is much more likely to get hurt again than a healthy one. When they re-aggravate an injury it's usually worse than the first time, so a minor tweak can become a real absence. In a game that doesn't matter much, resting a day-to-day player is often the smart move.

No team can have more than a set number of players injured at once. By default the limit is four, and the commissioner can set it anywhere from one to six. When your team is at the limit, no new injuries are added until someone gets healthy. This keeps a bad run of luck from wiping out your roster.

When a player goes out, their depth-chart slot is held for them on IR. During their recovery the slot counts as empty. If it's a starting slot, the game fills it with the best available player who can play that position. When they heal, they go straight back into their old slot, and your inbox tells you they're back, with nothing for you to do. AI teams rebuild their charts around injuries on their own. Your chart stays exactly as you set it, so check it after a big injury.

Your 13th to 15th players sit on the Inactive list. A player there with an active injury shows as IR. You can't make a healthy player from your regular rotation (top 8 by minutes and contract) Inactive, and the move is blocked when you try. If one you parked climbs into your top 8 while still sitting, the league reactivates them before the next sim, rebuilds your depth chart with your best available lineup, and sends you an inbox notice that also shows as a banner on your dashboard. Players the league made Inactive for you (at league setup, before you took the team) never count against you. Parking a healthy player at the end of your bench is fine. A healthy Inactive player is also deeply unhappy about it. See Chemistry & Morale.

A player's durability is hidden. A medical reveals it as a grade:

• Iron Man: rarely misses games.
• Durable: generally healthy, minor issues only.
• Average: normal injury risk.
• Fragile: a history of soft-tissue problems, so monitor them closely.
• Glass: extremely fragile, with a high risk of missing real time.

You can run a medical from the Scout Hub on your own players, free agents, trade targets and prospects (scout a prospect first). Like everything your staff reports, it's an informed read, not an exact figure. It's still the best way to avoid paying big money for a player who can't stay on the court. Once run, the grade stays on file for your team.

Fatigue is short-term tiredness, and it builds across games. Each player shows as Fresh, Rested, Tired or Gassed, based on how many games they've played in the past week, how heavy their minutes were, how many days of rest they've had, back-to-backs, their stamina and their age. Older players recover more slowly. Tired players lose quickness and legs first and then skill, they turn it over and foul more, and they're more likely to get hurt.

Rest cures fatigue. It doesn't cure injuries, which heal only with time and games. Managing minutes before a back-to-back is the cheapest injury prevention you have.