All-in-all, the original injury rules are pretty good at simulating injuries in the NBA. Over the course of an 82 game replay, for instance, you should see about 6 or 7 injuries occur where a player will have to miss multiple games. That seems pretty realistic. Where the injury system falls short, in my opinion, is that it does not account for all the times players get hurt in NBA games. I intentionally use the word "hurt" here, as there is certainly a distinction between getting hurt, and getting injured.
We see guys get hurt in NBA games all the time. A guy takes an elbow to the face while fighting for a rebound, or bangs knees with a defender while driving to the basket. The player might go back to the locker room for stitches in the latter case, or may walk it off on the sideline in the former case, but in both cases the player will return to the game at some point. The player didn't get injured, he got hurt.
To simulate players getting hurt the board game, I've come up with a simple change to the injury system:
Alternate Injury Rule
On a roll of X-12, if an injury is not indicated from the initial roll on the injury chart, a player may still have been hurt during play. Roll a six-sided die and apply the result to the "Possible Injury" section of the injury chart on the game board. The player at the named position was hurt during play and must sit out the remainder of the quarter, before being able to return to the game. If no player is indicated (a roll of 6), assess a technical foul to the offensive team's coach, resulting in a free throw for the opposing team.
It had always bothered me that when the rare X-12 is rolled during play, 75% of the time NOTHING happens; you interrupt play to roll on the injury chart, only to find that, most of the time, nothing actually occurred. Not fun! Using this rule however, now when an X-12 roll comes up in the game, you know that SOMETHING happens, to the detriment of the offensive team. Be it a player actually getting injured, a player getting hurt and only having to miss the remainder of the quarter, or a technical foul being called.
