The battle for La La land is renewed Thursday night when the Clippers face the Lakers for the first time this season. It’s been a critical game in the NBA recently, especially in Los Angeles. But reports have already surfaced that the Clippers star Kawhi Leonardwho is coming back from a torn ACL that forced him to miss all of last year, could come off the bench to start the season to ‘manage’ his minutes.
This is not a problem, as many players who return from more serious injuries are subject to a minutes restriction when they return to action. But let’s be honest for a second. We know where this will lead. Leonard was the star child of load management and once played for the load management display team, the San Antonio Spurs. But hey, if you can get away with it, do what you have to do. I don’t blame Leonard for doing what he’s been allowed to do for years.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver comes out every year and talks about the management of player minutes, but nothing has changed. We constantly hear about how today’s athletes are so much bigger, faster, stronger, and more skilled in the NBA. Yet no one seems to care about playing a full 82-game schedule.
In all honesty, it’s not all players, but load management usually features star players, who have the ability and freedom to choose when they play. But that’s what fans are going to see – NBA stars. In recent years, a shortened NBA season has been launched, and Commissioner Silver spoke about it over the summer.
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“I’m not looking to shorten the season, but it’s a conversation we should all be having,” Silver recognized. “What is optimal in terms of the number of plays on a player’s body? let’s be
realistic about it.
Sure, it’s a conversation that needs to happen, but unless the NBA can keep getting the same money from its TV partners, it’s not going to happen anytime soon. Professional sports is still a business and the association is just trying to make a few billion dollars like anyone else. I believe the commissioner wants to eliminate load management, but we are so advanced at this point that it will be difficult.
A few years ago, the league added the play-in tournament as a purgatory-like setup between the actual playoffs and Cancun in April. The play-in so far has provided some exciting moments, like LeBron James versus Stephen Curry two tournaments ago, but it’s nothing more than a cash grab. Play-in teams have little hope of getting past the first round once in the playoffs.
Now the NBA is considering adding a mid-season tournament in addition to making play-in a mainstay. Another attempt to increase revenue is acceptable, but none of this seems to entice players to play more. Even if you remove 10 games from the regular season schedule and add this tournament, it doesn’t create a lot of rest time. It depends on the number of teams participating in this tournament, even if it looks like a band-aid with dollar signs all over it.
Silver and the league office have no idea how to fix this load management issue. The bottom line is that he let this happen way too long and it’s almost impossible to undo now. I don’t see the NBA reducing the regular season schedule by more than 12-15 games. They would lose too much money in this process. But you can’t talk about cutting out a few games just to add an in-season tournament like these guys are back in college or high school.
For public relations purposes, Silver probably needs to speak out publicly against this and take strong action. Yet, in reality, anyone who follows this league closely knows who runs it. It’s called a player league for a reason. When Robert Save was accused of hurling stereotypical slurs at nearly every minority group in America, Silver acted as if he could do little or nothing. The players had to express themselves and that started the ball rolling. Now Sarver is about to leave. In 2014, players threatened to boycott after a recording by Donald Sterling leakin which Sterling said he didn’t want his girlfriend bringing black people to games, before Silver banned him and forced him to sell the Clippers.
However, in this situation, Silver will have to fend for himself to find a way to rid the league of load management. Players want it, and many have adopted it as a regular part of their regimen over the season. Even if it’s not just the players. Many teams are apparently cheering him on, taking a page from the San Antonio Spurs playbook.
Silver expressed his thoughts on the origins of the charge manager:
“There’s nothing more frustrating for our fans as well than having players, frankly, uninjured after a rest schedule. I watch [Spurs executive] CR [Buford], you started it all. It’s not clear, at least to me. Let it serve a useful purpose. So find a way to create that good healthy balance.
Silver knows the deal and he knows that the coaches, general managers and owners are just as much to blame as the players. If the commissioner really wants to stop this, he probably could. If he cares about fan enjoyment of the game, he will step in and fix that. If not, it’s time to stop talking about it and accept this as the reality of the league.
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