“Load Management”, the new buzzword in sports, is when a healthy star player sits out a game during the regular season for the purpose of having more energy and being less beaten up during the playoffs. Load management is not a new concept, as during the 80s, when Pat Riley was coaching the Showtime Lakers, Riles would sit one or more of his stars out of late season home games. Once the Lakers had secured their playoff seeding, and had nothing to play for heading into the playoffs, Riley would sit players. The difference was that if Magic would sit out, Kareem, Worthy, Scott & Rambis would still play.
In the 2000s, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich got into trouble with the league when he, borrowing a page from Riley’s book, would sit all of his star players on the same day, particularly if the opponent on that day had something to play for, even if the Spurs did not. The NBA felt that the Spurs were violating the sanctity of the league by creating outcomes that affected several teams, perhaps with the underlying purpose of bettering the Spurs’ situation.
Today, load management is a problem for the NBA and its fans because star players are sitting out games early in the season under the belief that the player would be healthier in April after sitting out a game in November. The problem is that players are sitting out nationally televised games or their teams only visit to a particular city. The issue started when Lebron James, while playing for Cleveland, elected to sit out his team’s only trip to Memphis, knowing that the Grizzly fans would not get to see James again in Memphis that season because the Griz were not going to make the NBA Finals.
Kawhi Leonard is the face of load management today because he indicated, before signing with the Clippers, that he intended to miss around 22 games during the current season because this approached helped the Toronto Raptors win the NBA Title in 2019.
The NBA and Commissioner Adam Silver have no idea what to do about load management, especially since Leonard is truly injured, but his team is offering load management instead of injury rest as the reason for his absences so far. That said, there is a very simple solution that would satisfy NBA fans and still allow players to appear in fewer games as their team prepares for the playoffs.
The NBA schedule consists of 4 games against a team’s division opponents, 4 games against 6 opponents from the same conference, 3 games against the other 4 conference teams, and finally, 2 games against every team from the opposing conference. Every team competes under the same schedule, and as such, creates an opportunity for every team to “load manage” a single star down to a 58 game season without alienating any NBA city.
The player could sit out one home game and one road game against the team’s division opponents, and the 6 conference opponents the team faces 4 times in the season. This would be 20 games that the player could miss. In addition, against the team where the player’s team will meet 3 times, the player can sit out one of the games in whichever city is hosting two games, meaning that the player would still play one game at home and on the road against these 4 teams and still sit out 4 more games. Against the opposing conference, the player would have to play in every game.
The total games missed would be 24 games, meaning that a load managing player would only have to play in 58 games, missing 24, and would still appear once in every NBA city and against every NBA team. Of course, nationally televised games would adjust this schedule, but a healthy player looking to load manage could do so while at the same time making sure that he is seen at least once in every NBA city. The player would only appear in 29 of his team’s 41 home games, but that would be the team’s problem, because the rest of the league would get to see Lebron, Kawhi, Lillard or whichever star they wanted to see at least once during the season, and the player would be able to get his desired rest.
No comments:
Post a Comment