The game was over. The 5–7 Brisbane Bullets were down by 31 points against the 4–8 New Zealand Breakers with a little over seven minutes to go in the fourth quarter. One could not be remiss to think that the scoreline was much closer or the game was more meaningful by looking at the players on the floor at that point in time; both teams still had the majority of their starters running around accumulating arbitrary minutes. Casey Prather of the Bullets was one of them. He had a team-high 26 points in 26 minutes of playing time when he leapt for a reverse lay-up, landed awkwardly and instantly grabbed his knee. Such a moment has meant that Prather is ruled out for the rest of the season after he underwent knee surgery for a hardware-related fixation issue.

Prather’s career will be one marked by its interruptions from numerous injury issues. He missed the entire 2018–19 season because of a knee clean-out, the last half of the 2019–20 season with a hamstring tear, sat out completely from 2021 to 2023 due to a variety of knee injuries and now will miss the last half of the 2025–26 season due to knee surgery. Prather has played professionally for 12 seasons; a total of 4 have been lost to injury. It is a tremendous shame because Prather is a special talent. He won three consecutive NBL championships from 2016 to 2018 and was selected as the Israeli League Most Valuable Player in 2021. What is perhaps more impressive is his perseverance; after his extended absence, he returned to what is now vintage form during his Bullets stint last season and was selected to the All-NBL Second Team. This season, his 24.4 points per game were the second-highest in the league. His performance should have seen him in most valuable player consideration if the Bullets were to improve their record but instead it will be another season lost in Prather’s career.

Prather’s injury history is apparent to anyone who has any awareness of his career. Failings of the human body in professional sport are unpredictable and could happen at anytime. Nobody knew that Prather’s knee would give out at that time; someone should have known that Prather’s knee could give out at that time though. It would have then become a matter of consideration for whether he should have still been playing. Perhaps Prather insisted on playing being the competitor that he is regardless of the situation at hand; that is when a coach should have reminded him that it is not worth the risk. Perhaps the Bullets were desperate to win a point in Ignite Cup scoring for winning the quarter and decided to run Prather some more minutes; what a nightmare if that was the justification. Whatever was the reason, the likelihood of Prather suffering an injury was increased by his mere presence on the floor and it was not worthy considering the situation.

With the growing awareness of the importance in rest for basketball players, the NBL often tends to be unusual with its insistence on still playing vital players long after the game is already done. If the opposite had occurred, Prather would have missed the final seven minutes of a throwaway game that was already decided. That surely had to be better than the remainder of another season in a sadly injury-riddled career.