Let's not forget that it's unlikely Harper even makes the finals that season if I hadn't lost Billingsley to injury in the semis. But regardless of that, the only way either of us had a chance to beat you was that injury in game 3.
Your right, both of us were going to be hard pressed to overcome Pappy's team without a little bit of luck (in this case it took the form of injuries). But as far as our SF game, I lost my starting C to injury a couple game minutes before Billingsley went down and I was up by 3 at the time Billingsley was hurt so it isn't like the Billingsley injury totally decided the game, or that injuries don't happen to everyone. I think everyone at times has benefited from injuries and everyone at times has been penalized by them, as I can definitely think of important games that I lost while sustaining an early injury to a key player. So while at a micro level injuries can seem unfair, I would say at the macro level they seem much more fair.
Billingsley was both my best perimeter defender and scorer that season, and also led my team in assists and was pretty much my only hope of containing Ritter. I can't be bothered to look the game up, partly due to lack of time, but mostly because I truly believe we are wandering off on a tangent with a bullwhip in search of a dead horse.
I think a big problem with injuries that no one has addressed so far is that it feels as if the occurrence of injuries increase in playoff games. I don't have any statistics that back that up as I am too lazy to look at games and figure out the percent of injuries but anecdotally it seems true. And if we are all about making the game "realistic", a player would be more likely to play through an injury in the playoffs rather than a regular season game, so by that logic I would think the chance of a player missing the remainder of a game in the playoffs due to an injury should actually be less than in the regular season.
With the exception of your first two sentences, I completely agree with this paragraph. The game injury being shortened to a quarter or two in the playoffs makes perfect sense as you've laid it out. As for longer injuries, one of the reasons I dislike the trade deadline is that you end up completely buttsexed if you happen to have an unfortunate injury once the playoffs begin; though I'll admit that it does make it a lot more like the NBA in that regard.
A way of fixing the unfairness here is to actually make the playoffs more lucrative, which may incentivize carrying a slightly larger roster in the playoffs for insurance purposes. But I'm not holding my breath on that one.