NBA: Big data, 129 kilos and millions of dollars at stake: the world on the knees of Zion Williamson | NBA 2019

The number one of the 'draft' debuts under the highest expectation: seats sold out until the end of the season, his team fighting for Playoffs and the shadow of 'the new LeBron James'.

• Classification
  

  The six divisions
  

The Peak Performance Project (P3) is a sports performance laboratory based in Santa Brbara, California. Every year dozens of professional athletes attend, including players from the NBA. There, for example, a teenager Luka Doncic in the summer of 2015. With last generation devices, the company collected all possible information about Slovenian: virtues and defects of its play style, footprint, movement of the feet and arms, strength… All this to discover how squeeze out all the potential, physical and technical, before them. The result could not be better.

Two years after that visit from Doncic, three P3 workers they moved to a gym of Houston. There they met another young teenager. Doncic had surprised them, but they had never witnessed it: a giant movindose as a base and crushing with the force of the greatest pvot they have seen: It has the highest peak of strength of any athlete we have analyzed, expressed in a report for 'ESPN'. They talked about a high school player: Zion Williamson

The number one of the 2019 draft debut this Wednesday in the NBA. I will do it at home, before the Spurs, in a Smoothie King Center of New Orleans that before the start of the season he had already sold all the locations of the course. After his exceptional preseason (23.3 points, 71% in the shot, 6.5 rebounds and 2.3 assists in 27 minutes), Williamson the meniscus was injured on October 21 without even officially debuting. Pas by operating room and the initial eight weeks off have become double by the caution of the Pelicans.

Risk factor's

At stake, the player's career, the future of the franchise, which with the healthy one already aspires to Playoffs, the future of the NBA and many millions of several companies: Jordan Brand, 2k Sports, Gatorade and Panini, among others, signed agreements in summer with Zion that exceed the 100 million dollars. His t-shirt bati sale records after the 'draft' and his debut in the Summer League adds more than 10 million views. The last time there was this level of interest in a boy was with LeBron James, explained one of Panini's marketing chiefs.

During these months, the Pelicans have taken the opportunity to thoroughly analyze Williamson's physicist. They want to have the most data to try prevent any other injuries. A boy with that weight can't play in the NBA, he claimed Charles Barkley. But the 129 kilos and 198 centimeters Zion's are not the big deal.

In the studies conducted by the P3 company to hundreds of NBA players, they discovered what the major risk factors in knee injuries: the first three were mechanics. How it turns the foot during the jumphow it turns the fmur in relation to the shin and the ability to control the landing using the hips after a jump. The fourth and final will be the weight.

Flexibility and strength

That is, weight is not an independent factor, but multiplies the danger when the other factors are out of control. That's what the Pelicans have focused on during rehabilitation: they study the length of your steps, the movement of your hip, of your knees, where you put the weight of your body, whether on the toes or on the floor … Big Data.

The key to Zion's longevity They will be your lower extremities. That fits, acclimate and feel comfortable, explains David Griffin, gerente general of the franchise. We have to work to be flexible enough and have the right mechanics, and support that flexibility with the necessary strength to control it, because earns muscle faster than anyone, recognizes ESPN, remembering that in summer, in just one week of training with the team, he was able to gain four kilos of muscles. One of his coaches summarizes the goal: If you're not moving well, it doesn't matter if you weigh 300 pounds or 175, there is going to be a problem.

“Your knee may get old sooner”

The hip in someone young is more protected, but knee and ankle are more exposed, especially in such an explosive and aggressive player both in the boat and in the jumps for bounces and kills, explains to EL MUNDO the Dr. Lpez de Ramn.

The menisci are key in the knee, because they stabilize and distribute the axial load and absorb the impact so that there is less stress on the joint and leg. After a total meniscectomy of the internal, the axial load on the remaining surface is 100% greater and if it is externally 200% greater, which leads to early degenerative changes such as osteoarthritis and articular cartilage lesions, that is, your knee may “age” before and is likely to have intercurrent episodes of joint inflammation, analyzes this specialist from the University Hospital Complex of Ourense.

You will have to strengthen the cudriceps a lot to stabilize the knee (more unstable because of the meniscus loss) and losing weight will benefit you to reduce the load on the joint and leg. In addition to changing certain positional and movement habits to reduce the impact on the joint, Lpez de Ramn concludes.