Injuries Throwing Wrench into N.B.A. Contenders' Plans Given a truly brutal 66-games-in-123-days schedule, the question of whether injuries would start derailing the seasons of N.B.A. players and their teams was always more a matter of when than if. On Tuesday, it was announced that Clippers guard Chauncey Billups had a torn Achilles" tendon - sustained during Monday's overtime win over Orlando - that would force the veteran floor general to miss the remainder of the season. In New York, Carmelo Anthony is expected to be sidelined up to two weeks with a strained groin - this while having just recovered from ankle and wrist maladies, and despite logging the fewest minutes per game of his career. And the list goes on: Dwyane Wade, Amar'e Stoudemire, Stephen Curry, Derrick Rose, Elton Brand, and Eric Gordon - to name just a handful of notables - have all been forced to spend multiple games in street garb, cheering from the folding chairs. Of course, it's impossible to pinpoint the correlation between a condensed schedule and the slew of injuries. Still, one thing is clear: Teams that spent the off-season targeting or maintaining depth rather than duplicating firepower (the Dallas Mavericks, Denver Nuggets, Oklahoma City Thunder and Chicago Bulls come immediately to mind), or whose coaches have employed a scientific and cautious parsing of playing time (Gregg Popovich in San Antonio, most notably), will likely be the ones to benefit - in the form of favorable playoff seeding - down the stretch. Meanwhile, the other approach - typified by teams like the Knicks, Celtics, and Lakers, albeit unintentionally - seems to be to merely survive the regular season and make the playoffs, seeding be damned. For these squads, carefully plotting playing time and handing significant burn to the bench is a luxury they simply do not have. That is, of course, until injury compels as much. Just ask Anthony, Stoudemire, Rajon Rondo, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen - all of whom have found themselves cheering in chinos for their backups. The Knicks in particular should be familiar with this scenario: After spending the lockout-hindered 1998 off-season assembling a team high on name recognition, with Latrell Sprewell and Marcus Camby joining a club that already included Patrick Ewing, Allan Houston, and Larry Johnson, the Knicks languished and limped their way to the Eastern Conference's eighth seed. After upending the top-seeded Heat in one of the most hotly contested first-round series in league history, the Knicks would then breeze by the Atlanta Hawks, before defeating "90s nemesis Indiana in the conference finals. But getting to the N.B.A finals came at a hefty price. Like the 35-year-old Billups, Ewing -- then 36 and dealing with a number of leg-related maladies -- had by the third game of the Pacers series finally succumbed to his own Achilles injury. Without their cornerstone and leader, the Knicks would fall to the dynasty-poised San Antonio Spurs and their twin-tower front line of David Robinson and Tim Duncan in five largely lopsided games. This year, the Knicks find themselves with a team similarly star-studded and bench-thin, and the results (10-15 as of Wednesday) have reflected as much. At this point, it seems unlikely that the lofty expectations of the preseason - many had predicted the Knicks to finish as high as third in the conference - will be met. But if the 1999 season proved anything, it's that being the "fittest" - be it on paper or in philosophy - isn't nearly as important as simple survival. Whether the Knicks or any other team can do so without suffering a loss to star or cornerstone is another question entirely. Jim Cavan is a contributing writer at KnickerBlogger.net, a member of the ESPN TrueHoop network. You can find him on Twitter (@JPCavan).