Injury is the NBA's biggest, shiniest, most inevitable monkey wrench. Every year, without fail, we wait for it to wreck teams' best-laid plans.

It never disappoints.

This season, like every one before it, several squads saw their starting lineups and rotations knocked off-kilter by bad luck on the health front. No one was immune, and it'd be easy enough to run down the ways all 30 teams had to adjust to reduced manpower on the fly. But we're focused on the clubs that truly had their campaigns altered by injury, particularly the ones that saw their contender status compromised.

That means we're looking for high-profile issues. Superstars knocked out for long stretches, multiple front-line starters shelved at once—typically those playing for good teams where the stakes are highest and the cost of slippage is greatest.

Let's see which teams took the most significant damage in 2023-24.

Memphis Grizzlies

When starting center Steven Adams' season ended before it began, maybe we should have taken it as a sign of things to come.

The Memphis Grizzlies announced on Oct. 22 that Adams would undergo season-ending surgery on his right knee after non-operative rehab failed to fix the instability he'd endured since spraining his PCL way back in January 2023. He'd be the first of four starters to miss extended time, and his absence also thinned a frontcourt already missing Brandon Clarke, who tore his Achilles late last year.

Ja Morant's suspension after he repeatedly appeared to brandish firearms in social media posts cost him the first 25 games of the season. After returning, he suited up for just nine contests before a torn labrum required surgery and turned 2023-24 into a completely lost year.

Marcus Smart, Memphis' big offseason addition, lost 17 games from Nov. 18 to Dec. 23 with an ankle injury. He returned to action on Dec. 26 but lasted just nine more contests before a finger injury, which required surgery, shelved him for good on Jan. 9.

Throw in Desmond Bane, who was Memphis' early-season rock, playing 37 of the team's first 38 games before a brutal Grade 3 ankle sprain put him on the pine next to several teammates. He hasn't played since Jan. 13 but may be nearing a return, per comments from head coach Taylor Jenkins to DaMichael Cole of the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

With Memphis long since out of the playoff picture, it's not exactly a shock Bane exceeded the three-to-five-week recovery timeline the Grizz provided on Feb. 22. His absence is already past the two-month mark, and you'd assume Memphis will tread carefully when he retakes the floor.

The list of fallen Grizzlies extends deeper into the rotation, as Ziaire Williams' campaign likely ended in early March due to hip flexor and lower back issues. Luke Kennard and Derrick Rose haven't stayed healthy for a full season in several years, and both have missed major time again in 2023-24.

The best way to illustrate the Grizzlies' woes: They tied a franchise record against the Oklahoma City Thunder on March 10 when DeJon Jarreau became the 28th player to log court time this season.

New York Knicks

Every team's injury struggles will seem modest compared to the Grizzlies', but let's not undersell the impact of the New York Knicks losing their entire frontcourt for a significant chunk of the season.

Julius Randle (shoulder), Mitchell Robinson (ankle) and OG Anunoby (elbow) still haven't played a second together in 2023-24, and Anunoby's trade-deadline arrival is only partly to blame.

Robinson had ankle surgery in December and initially wasn't expected back at all, based on the Knicks' application for a Disabled Player Exception—a request the league denied but one that teams don't tend to make casually.

Robinson's ace backup, Isaiah Hartenstein, has been battling Achilles soreness for weeks and is a good reminder that not all injuries knock players out of action altogether. Some, like Hartenstein's, limit performance and cut minutes, which can be almost as disruptive as an outright absence.

Anunoby is back, and the Knicks have absolutely dominated whenever he's been on the floor this season. Meanwhile, Randle and Robinson are still facing uncertain timetables. They've combined to play just 67 games between them, and neither has reached the full-contract, five-on-five stage of recovery. It doesn't seem likely they'll add much to that 67-game total before the playoffs.

The Knicks didn't see their season completely torpedoed like the Grizzlies, but their health issues are still exacting a toll. New York is in a fight to hold onto the No. 4 spot in the East and could conceivably slip as far down the standings as eighth. If not for all those injuries, the Knicks might have been in the running for the No. 2 seed in the conference.

Cleveland Cavaliers

It's hard to argue that a Cleveland Cavaliers team that has spent a considerable amount of time behind only the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference standings has been "devastated" by injuries. But how do you exclude them from this list when Evan Mobley, Jarrett Allen, Darius Garland and Donovan Mitchell have appeared in just 22 games together this season?

Cleveland's top four talents have been playing injury Whac-a-Mole all year.

Garland fractured his jaw on Dec. 14 and didn't return until Jan. 31.

Tangential note to the rest of the NBA: Please stop hitting Garland in the face. He missed four games after getting poked in the eye on opening night and was fed up with getting clocked in the noggin before incurring his pair of injuries this season.

"I told them I need a mask at this point or some goggles or something because it's getting out of hand," Garland told Chris Fedor of Cleveland.com way back in December 2022. "I'm just tired of getting hit in my face."

Anyway, Allen actually kicked off Cleveland's one-up, one-down season by missing the first five games of the year. He's been available since then and deserves massive credit for the Cavs' top-five defense, but Mitchell has had four separate instances of multiple missed games in a row with the longest of those spanning from March 1 to March 11. He won't clear the 65-game threshold for All-NBA consideration.

Then there's Mobley, who appeared in Cleveland's first 21 games but went down on Dec. 8 and had arthroscopic surgery on his left knee 10 days later. He returned on Jan. 29 and appeared in 17 of the Cavs' next 18 contests before an ankle injury iced him again on March 5.

Cleveland will have a half-dozen rotation players top 60 games, and Allen and Max Strus could hit 70. But this team is going to enter the playoffs having seen its best four players share the floor for just 305 total minutes, only 48 of which have come after the All-Star break.

Philadelphia 76ers

Prior to the injury that changed everything, Joel Embiid had already missed about a quarter of the Philadelphia 76ers' first 46 games.

Playing at a level that had him in the driver's seat for a second straight MVP, Embiid was still good enough across that oft-interrupted stretch to have his team in second place in the East through late January.

Golden State Warriors forward Jonathan Kuminga fell on Embiid's balky knee during a 12-point Sixers loss on Jan. 30, which led to meniscus surgery for Philly's best player and a somewhat predictable slide down the standings.

From a spot that seemingly assured them home-court advantage in the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Sixers have tumbled into the play-in mix. If Embiid doesn't return, Philadelphia will be at risk of falling to any of the teams—Atlanta, Chicago, Miami or Indiana—it may see in the first Play-In contest.

It's not exactly a revelation to say losing an MVP-caliber superstar hurts a team's bottom line, but there may have also been more complicated downstream effects. For example, might the 76ers have operated more aggressively at the trade deadline if not for the uncertainty surrounding the rest of the season?

Dating back to the James Harden fiasco, Philly has quietly had one eye trained on maximizing Embiid's prime by pushing for a title this year while the other scopes out 2024 free agency.

The Sixers still got down to transactional business by adding Buddy Hield at the deadline, but who knows how much more aggressive they might have been if not for Embiid's injury?

It also hasn't helped that the opening night starting backcourt of Tyrese Maxey (nine games) and De'Anthony Melton (29 games through March 12 and counting) have had their own stretches in street clothes.

Phoenix Suns

When you build a roster around three stars, a historically injury-plagued center (though let's credit Jusuf Nurkić for staying healthier than anyone expected) and a whole bunch of minimum-contract role players, you have to hope for good injury luck.

Lose one big name, and several players get shoved up the pecking order into spots they're not quite equipped to handle.

The Phoenix Suns weren't particularly fortunate on the health front. And if we're going to include the Cleveland Cavaliers, who got 22 total games from their top four stars, we have to give the Suns the same treatment because Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal have shared the court in only 25 games.

The Suns are 15-10 in those contests and post a plus-8.7 net rating with their top three players on the floor. Take any one of KD, Booker or Beal out of the mix, and the resulting two-man combo fares (expectedly) worse than that plus-8.7 mark. The Beal-Durant (minus-2.6) and Booker-Beal (minus-1.6) duos couldn't even manage break-even net ratings without the third star alongside them.

Durant has been remarkably durable, topping 55 games for the first time since before he tore his Achilles in 2019 and averaging 37.1 minutes. Booker missed eight of Phoenix's first 10 games, plus another half-dozen since then. He can't miss much more time if he hopes to top the 65-game threshold for All-NBA consideration.

That still puts him well ahead of Beal, who's faced persistent back, ankle and hamstring issues and missed 29 of the Suns' first 53 games. At his current rate, Beal will be lucky to reach 50 games on the year.

As a result, the Suns will go down the stretch fighting to stay out of the play-in. They're still extremely dangerous, particularly on offense, when healthy. No one will want to see them in the first round. But it's hard to escape the feeling of lost opportunity, as a different, healthier version of this team seemed likely to win 60-plus games and challenge for the West's top seed.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Accurate entering games March 15. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.