Richard Jefferson rips NBA players over load management with a passionate speech

Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard has set a worrisome precedent in today’s NBA. Load managing and sitting out games despite being healthy has become ausual trend, and that’s not making the league any better.

I mean, why aren’t other players who are also on the floor for 35+ minutes load-managing? Isn’t Mikal Bridges (eighth in minutes per game) not important for the game? So why would Luka Doncic sit out and not him? They both average the same minutes.

Kobe Bryant played through countless injuries because he knew there were fans in the standings that would only get to see him play once in their lifetimes. Now, the players just don’t seem to care about that.

NBA News: Richard Jefferson Goes Against Load Management.

That’s why former NBA champion Richard Jefferson shared a personal story and explained why he’s against load management, also pointing out that it didn’t exist back in the day and the players were just fine.

“We want you to do what’s been done over the course of the game of basketball,” Jefferson said on NBA Today.“I was fortunate to come in in 2001. There was one trainer, there wasn’t a traveling masus, and there wasn’t all of these amenities. We now have teams paying millions of dollars to sports science.”

“For Christmas, my parents got me a ticket to go watch the San Antonio Spurs cause David Robinson was my favorite player,” Jefferson said.“One ticket. My dad, who worked security and rubbed floors and all of that stuff; he used to drop me off at the game, and I went in there by myself because my family couldn’t afford to come to the game. So every day that I was on the court, I remembered my father, I remember having one ticket and being there and all the families and all the people that were just like me. If David Robinson wouldn’t have played in that game, I get emotional thinking about it because I got to stand next to him in Game 6 of the NBA Finals when he was about to go off into the sunset and tell him he was my favorite player.”

The league needs to do something about this. Shortening the season won’t make the product better. If anything, it will only make star players miss even more games. This is just terrible for the fans. You should play if you’re healthy, not choose when you want to play or not.