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While the league’s biggest stars all have been surprisingly healthy this year, 2010-2011 still has been a season rife with debilitating injuries.  Players have lost significant amounts of time to ailments that have cost either them or their teams a good deal of success, and in some cases both of those things have been negatively affected.

This week’s Top 5 list looks at the injuries that have been most debilitating to the player’s teams and to themselves this past season.  This isn’t going to be pretty, folks…

#5 – Chris Kaman, L.A. Clippers (games played: 23) – A year ago Kaman was an All-Star.  This year, thanks to a combination of his own injury issues and a breakout season by DeAndre Jordan, it doesn’t even seem as though the Clippers need him anymore.  On the one hand, having Kaman healthy for the 2/3 of the season he’s missed would’ve done nothing but help L.A. make a push for the postseason, but more importantly is it has all but guaranteed Kaman’s eventual exit from L.A.  This is a young, promising team now, and Kaman ain’t so young no more.

#4 – Anderson Varejao, Cleveland Cavaliers (games played: 31) – Could Andy have saved Cleveland from one of the most embarrassing seasons in league history?  Probably not.  However, adding a guy that shoots such a high percentage from the floor and who keeps up the energy of the entire team might have made a huge difference during that record-setting losing streak.  He wouldn’t have put them in the playoffs, but he might have kept them from such a public humiliation.

#3 – Greg Oden, Portland Trail Blazers (games played: 0) – It’s hard to say that this particular injury devastated the Blazers, but it was the first domino in what would be a borderline ridiculous season of injuries for Portland.  Andre Miller and LaMarcus Aldridge kept things competitive even without the former #1 overall pick, but Oden’s defense certainly wouldn’t have hurt anything for a team that looks like it could be a huge headache in the playoffs.  Even worse, we’re all wondering if this is the injury that finally kills any hope we once had about Oden being a dominant NBA player.

#2 – Yao Ming, Houston Rockets (games played: 5) – Houston came into the season with the game plan of playing Yao 20 minutes or fewer every night, and that worked for about two weeks before  Yao was lost for the season.  Heading into the season there were some who thought Houston could be a scrappy team this season and win a bunch of games they probably shouldn’t, but when Yao went down the roster just looked young and incapable, and it affected everything they did this season, including trading for not-so-promising young center Hasheem Thabeet.  Even worse?  This last injury might be the one that forces Yao into retirement, meaning we could never see him play in the NBA again.

#1 – Brandon Roy, Portland Trail Blazers (games played: 32) – It’s not that Roy’s injury necessarily ruined 2010-2011—the team has played extremely well, even without him—it’s the long-term ramifications of Roy’s bad knees that make the whole situation especially disappointing.  Roy’s annual salary is just going to go up, and his knees are just going to get worse.  As good a guy as he is, and as much as Portland loves him, the reality of this year’s injuries are that Roy’s career as a perennial All-Star is pretty much over at age 26 is painful.  Very, very painful.

Honorable Mention

Kendrick Perkins, Boston Celtics (games played: 13) – This particular injury proved most devastating in that it convinced the Celtics they could be an elite team in the Eastern Conference without one of the best post defenders in the game.  Because they rushed out to the top seed in the East without him, they felt like they could move Perkins for pieces more immediately necessary to a championship.  While there’s still plenty opportunity for that to be proven true, it seems imminent that Boston will miss their former big guy once the playoffs roll around, especially when (or if) it comes to playing teams like Orlando or L.A.

Brandon Jennings, Milwaukee Bucks (games played: 46) – We feared the deer last season, and with a few big-name additions in Milwaukee we all thought we’d be fearing them again.  That didn’t happen, though, and a midseason injury to the team’s top scorer and assist man in Brandon Jennings certainly didn’t help matters.  His loss dug Milwaukee into a funk that they simply haven’t been able to crawl out of, and now we fear the deer no more.

{AUTHOR_BOX}Caron Butler, Dallas Mavericks (games played: 29) – Not that Dallas has been particularly disappointing without Butler, but to lose a guy that scores around 16 points per game is undeniably painful.  This injury is doubly painful for Butler himself, who was in a contract year and undoubtedly was hoping to play himself into what could be the last big contract of his career.

Jonas Jerebko (games played: 0) – For those that have forgotten, Jerebko was one of only two or three big men from last year’s draft class that really made any sort of lasting impact his rookie season, and as a result of his solid play Detroit did absolutely nothing in the offseason to shore up the four spot in their rotation.  There was a huge hole there all season long, and while the Pistons struggles go way, way beyond losing their starting power forward, having him there would’ve made at least a few games a heck of a lot less frustrating.

Joakim Noah, Chicago Bulls (games played: 35) – As a team, the Bulls actually did just fine with Noah out.  Despite the fact he is unquestionably their best defensive player, the Bulls transformed themselves into the league’s best team defense with Kurt Thomas in the middle instead of him. What’s really devastating about Noah’s injury is he was probably on his way to his first All-Star appearance, but the surgery on his hand nixed that.  Maybe next year.

Carlos Boozer, Chicago Bulls (games played: 45) – Were Derrick Rose not having an MVP season, this could have easily been one of the more painful injuries to a team all season long.  Even with the way things have worked out for the Bulls, the fact that their huge summer signing hurt himself tripping over a suitcase before even the first preseason game knocked the wind of Bulls fans all around Chicago.  He’s come back relatively strong (on the offensive end at least; his defense is atrocious), and his team is winning, so overall it’s hard to complain.  But it sure was frustrating at the time.

Mehmet Okur, Utah Jazz (games played: 13) – Okur missed the whole first part of the season recovering from one injury, played on-and-off for a few weeks, then called it quits again with that darn bum ankle.  Blame the retirement of Jerry Sloan or the loss of Deron Williams on Utah’s poor play this year, but losing a veteran big-man that score and spread the floor certainly didn’t help anything, either.  Considering they’ve lost 10 of their last 14 and have fallen out of the West’s playoff picture, it’s pretty easy to say that Okur could have helped.

Eric Gordon, L.A. Clippers (games played: 43) – You never want to lose your leading scorer for an extended period of time, especially when that leading scorer drops almost 24 points a night.  There’s no question that Gordon is having a great year, but the real travesty was not being able to watch him play alongside Blake Griffin for those 25 games he missed.  Would L.A. be in the playoff picture had Gordon played all those games?  There’s still a strong chance that they wouldn’t, but they’d be a lot closer to sneaking in than they are now.

Andrew Bynum, L.A. Lakers (games played: 43) – Nobody could have guessed coming into the season that the defending league champions would be only the third-best team in the Western Conference, but that’s exactly what has happened.  How it happened comes down to a lot of different criteria, but the loss of Bynum for a huge chunk of the year is certainly a primary one.  At least, knowing that Bynum ends up hurt for at least some stretch of time every year, L.A. has assembled a roster that can weather a few weeks without the big guy, which is what happened again in 2010-2011.  He’s healthy now, though, and the Lakers are looking solid again.  It could’ve been a lot more devastating than it was, especially if it were at all surprising that Bynum would miss some time.

Tyreke Evans, Sacramento Kings (games played: 46) – The Kings are bad, and the Kings probably would’ve been had they had the reigning Rookie of the Year for an extra 20 games.  Still, in a year that’s supposed to be devoted to letting these young kids play together as much as possible so that in future the Kings are not bad, having Evans miss so much time is obviously detrimental.  Not completely devastating since Sacramento wasn’t going to be playing for much anyway, but definitely detrimental.

There’s still time for (God forbid) another injury to completely devastate a playoff-bound team—heck, it almost happened to Kobe Bryant and the L.A. Lakers over the weekend—but the list we’ve got above is more than enough to amply depress fans that have worked hard to push these things far from their memories.  It’s a long season, and sometimes injuries happen, it’s just never fun when they do, even when the team ends up doing just fine despite them.