17 NBA Careers Destroyed By Injury

To make it in any professional sporting league, including the National Basketball Association, you have to have a combination of abilities that few other people on the planet possess. But once you make it to the NBA, anyone will tell you that the two most important abilities among them all are “durability” and “availability.”

Even in a sport that’s not known for intense physical contact, the history of the NBA is littered with guys whose careers were ended too soon because of injury issues. Here’s a quick look at 17 of them — a list which includes some of the biggest names in the history of the league: