Los Angeles Clippers star Kawhi Leonard has set a worrisome precedent in todayâs NBA. Load managing and sitting out games despite being healthy has become ausual trend, and thatâs not making the league any better.
I mean, why arenât other players who are also on the floor for 35+ minutes load-managing? Isnât 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 donât seem to care about that.
NBA News: Richard Jefferson Goes Against Load Management.
Thatâs why former NBA champion Richard Jefferson shared a personal story and explained why heâs against load management, also pointing out that it didnât exist back in the day and the players were just fine.
âWe want you to do whatâs been done over the course of the game of basketball,â Jefferson said on NBA Today.âI was fortunate to come in in 2001. There was one trainer, there wasnât a traveling masus, and there wasnât all of these amenities. We now have teams paying millions of dollars to sports science.â
âFor Christmas, my parents got me a ticket to go watch the San Antonio Spurs cause David Robinson was my favorite player,â Jefferson said.âOne 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 couldnât 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 wouldnât 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.â
The league needs to do something about this. Shortening the season wonât 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 youâre healthy, not choose when you want to play or not.
