Consider a player like Jokic, a 6-foot-11 center who can dribble and make shots from anywhere. Combined with a never-ending amateur scene that puts heavy wear and tear on players before they even get to the NBA, the league’s modern style of play is a meat grinder. As longtime NBA journalist Mike Prada retorted to Jefferson, the game has spaced out and put a premium on fast, tiring movements that the old guard didn’t have to perform nearly as often. But basketball has also evolved into something different from the sport Barkley (who last played in 2000) and even Jefferson (2018) played. The postseason should be the ultimate aim point for any basketball operations staff, and load management fits into it. Load management has furthered that dynamic. The sport has culturally devalued its regular season with endless discourse about individual player and team greatness that focuses overwhelmingly on the playoffs. I think you’d see way fewer games missed from players,” Curry’s coach argues.īut NBA teams and players have reasons to be cautious. “That creates enough rest where we don’t have to have some of these crazy situations. Steve Kerr wants the season to shrink from 82 games to 72. Charles Barkley bemoaned the state of things with athletes making $40 or $50 million yet acting “like they’re steel mill workers.” Steph Curry wants people to know that players themselves don’t push to rest. Richard Jefferson spoke passionately on ESPN about how bummed he would’ve been, as a kid, if the legendary David Robinson had sat out a game Jefferson attended. Former players who are now commentators weighed in as well.
Sometimes, that line blurs.) Nikola Jokic sat out a game against Giannis Antetokounmpo, denying fans a chance to see the two players who have won the past four MVP awards go head-to-head. (The Heat ruled Butler out with an injury, not as a load management case. A video went viral of a young Miami Heat fan, holding a sign that said he’d flown more than 4,000 miles to see Jimmy Butler play, learning that Butler would not play that night. Kevin Durant and Stan Van Gundy wondered in an amusing Twitter exchange about why hamstring and groin injuries seem so prevalent right now despite the emphasis on rest and improvements in sport science. Load management is no longer new, but the public conversation about it has hit a flashpoint over the past few weeks.
If you watch a team that is playing two games in two days, you will likely see at least one of its best players in street clothes. The NBA has hit teams with a few more fines and threats of fines, but loads have continued to be managed. But the practice has persisted and taken on its semi-official label, and the debate has gone on, too, about whether it’s OK for teams to tactically retreat from regular season games in the name of self-preservation. Then-commissioner David Stern was making a fair point when he fined the Spurs $250,000 under a rule against “resting players in a manner contrary to the best interests of the NBA,” which the Spurs did by making a premier game became much less interesting. Coach Gregg Popovich angled to keep them fresh while more or less throwing away a big-time regular season game against the Miami Heat, whom his team would later play in that year’s NBA Finals. The San Antonio Spurs were making a fair point when they sent four aging stars home before a road game in 2012. It’s rare because, in an increasingly vapid world of sports hootin’ and hollerin’, everyone is making fair points. The NBA’s interminable debate about “load management,” the practice of teams resting healthy players to preserve them for the balance of an 82-game season and the playoffs, is a rare one.
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