There are players who miss time. There are players who have “a history.” And then there’s Anthony Davis, whose availability has become so much a part of the public conversation that fans don’t just track his status, they track his body parts like they’re Pokémon.
The latest chapter arrived this week in Dallas: Davis left Thursday night’s game against Utah with a left-hand injury, and an MRI showed ligament damage and that he may need season-ending surgery (with at least a six-week absence even if surgery is avoided). It’s a grimly familiar headline for a player who has been a superstar in talent and a day-to-day adventure in logistics.
Which brings us to the internet’s newest framing device: does AD have the greatest “injury bag” of all time?
A reddit post circulating online, based on a tally of Davis’ Fox Sports injury log, claims Davis has had 51 “unique” injury labels and 296 total entries, with the list reading like a medical school final. The categories alone are almost comedic in their range: foot, ankle, Achilles, back, adductor, knee, calf, shoulder, plantar fascia, plus the occasional curveball (“personal,” “rest,” “illness,” and the wonderfully vague “leg”).
The funniest part, if you’re allowing yourself one laugh in between the sympathy, is the sheer variety. Lots of injury-prone stars have a signature repeat offender: Grant Hill’s ankle, Derrick Rose’s knees, Tracy McGrady’s back, Penny Hardaway’s knees. Davis has a full menu. He’s not just injury-prone; he’s injury-versatile. The “injury bag” concept lands because it talks about health like it’s a skill set, like AD can reach into a duffel and pull out a fresh designation depending on opponent and arena: “Tonight, I’m going with a calf strain… but I’ve also been working on a new hand ligament look.” That’s dark humor, but it’s also how fans cope with the frustration of watching greatness repeatedly get interrupted.
And make no mistake: the greatness is real. Davis has played 807 regular-season games in his career, and when he’s on the court he has been one of the league’s most impactful two-way bigs of his generation. That’s what keeps the “what if” alive. Not a hypothetical player. An actual champion-level talent whose career has required more asterisks than most Hall of Famers get in their entire biographies.
So is it the “greatest injury bag OAT”? Depends what you mean by greatest.
If you mean most diverse catalog, Davis has a strong case, at least by the breadth and the viral tally derived from it. If you mean most damaging to legacy, that gets harder, because some careers were outright stolen by one catastrophic injury (Rose, Brandon Roy), while Davis has lived a different kind of tragedy: the slow drip. Enough injuries to disrupt rhythm, delay chemistry, and keep entire seasons from ever feeling like a clean runway.
But here’s the part that makes the question worth asking, beyond the jokes: Davis’ “bag” has reshaped how teams build around him. The Mavericks’ current crisis, waiting on opinions, timelines, potential surgery, shows how one injury doesn’t just affect a player. It affects trade plans, rotations, and the basic narrative of a season. For Davis, that’s happened so often that availability has become part of his scouting report, as unfair as it sounds for a guy who is, by all accounts, desperate to play.
And that’s the “what if” that never goes away: what if Anthony Davis had just been… normal healthy?
Not ironman healthy. Not LeBron-cyborg healthy. Just normal. What if you got 70-plus games of AD, year after year, with uninterrupted conditioning and chemistry and a body that didn’t constantly negotiate with gravity? You’d be talking about a player with a legitimate argument as the defining big of his era, not just a star, but a blueprint. A perennial Defensive Player of the Year-level anchor who also drops 30 on your head with guard skills in a center’s frame. Instead, his career has too often been narrated like a hospital drama: new episode, new body part, same talent, same heartbreak.
So no, “greatest injury bag of all-time” isn’t an award anyone should want to win. But as a piece of basketball folklore, it captures something real: Anthony Davis has been spectacular enough to inspire championships, and unlucky enough to inspire spreadsheets.
And right now, with a damaged hand and a looming decision about surgery, the bag just got heavier again.
