Very long but interesting article on this injury. The following is concerning for me from a Rockets standpoint. And you wonder if Harden needs to Eurostep less and play less minutes in order to minimize his injury possibilities until the playoffs. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10072331/derrick-rose-rob-gronkowski-rise-acl-tears
More reason to limit Harden and Parsons minutes, at least during the regular season. Riding your stars heavy during the regular season for a couple more wins is shortsighted. Not worth the risk.
NFL ACL's are on the rise because defenders need to target that part of the body to not get called for any number of flags.
Ligament tears in general are going up because people are getting stronger and faster. Eventually when the muscles keep increasing in mass, the other mechanical components of the system start to fail. I.e. the things that attach the muscles to bones (like an Achilles tendon) and the things that attach bones to each other (like an ACL). Evolutionarily speaking, it takes a lot longer time to grow a human being with stronger ligaments than it does stronger muscles. Muscles hypertrophy; they are meant to grow and shrink in response to hormones. Bones to a certain extent also listen to HGH while people are growing up. Ligaments don't seem to have this sort of growth mechanism. Maybe later on we'll figure out how to engineer ourselves some stronger joints. Maybe dads will start to sprain their kids' ankles when they're young so they grow back stronger. For now though, it's almost better to break a bone than it is to tear a tendon/ligament. Somewhere in Africa a 6'7 kid is limping around because Kobe Bryant paid him 100k to heist away his Achilles tendon.
You muscles around the knee have to get much much stronger, so they can assume the role of ACL. Of course this is not a 100% solution and he has to play careful, like one poster above me said, but it's a solution.
I am of this opinion as well. In the last twenty years (more so in the last 10) sports science has really pushed the human body to (past) it's limit. The muscles are trained to excel at certain movements but as you said, the connective tissue simply can't keep up. You can turbo charge a 150hp car up 300hp relatively easy but the rest of the car will fall apart trying to handle the new power.
