Swelling joints, aching muscles and the rigours of an NBA season can exact an incredible physical toll on even the fittest of players.

With up to five games a week, daily practices and little or no time for true recuperation, injuries not serious enough to require missing games pile up like few non-athletic types can imagine. Bruises never really heal, the swelling on the side of a knee never entirely goes away, muscles get frayed and have no time to grow healthy again.

It's so tempting ? and was once so common ? for players to simply swallow a couple of pills to force the swelling to subside, the pain to diminish.

But increasingly wary of the health implications of regularly ingesting anti-inflammatory and pain medication, players are no longer willing to risk their long-term well-being for short-term pain relief.

Where once there was a predisposition to take medications like they were candies, players now are more willing to suffer through bumps and bruises because they cannot be sure that treating them as they did in the past won't haunt them sometime in the future.