NBA says its data no longer supports load management concept
The term “load management” has been an oft-used phrase in recent years across the NBA, for better or worse. In practice, load management’s purpose rests on sitting certain players who are deemed healthy to reduce the risk of injury if there’s a lot of wear on the body.
But the NBA, according to league insiders Joe Vardon and Sam Amick of The Athletic, no longer believes that load management reduces injuries, according to a recently conducted study.
“Before, it was a given conclusion that the data showed that you had to rest players a certain amount, and that justified them sitting out,” Joe Dumars, the NBA executive vice president of basketball operations, said earlier this week, according to Vardon and Amick. “We’ve gotten more data, and it just doesn’t show that resting, sitting guys out correlates with lack of injuries, or fatigue, or anything like that. What it does show is maybe guys aren’t as efficient on the second night of a back-to-back.
“Obviously everybody’s not going to play 82 games, but everyone should want to play 82 games. And that’s the culture that we are trying to reestablish right now.”
The league recently tightened restrictions on resting rules for “star players,” who they deem as players who were named an NBA All-Star or to an All-NBA team within the previous three seasons. The NBA is also negotiating a media rights deal after the 2024-25 season that could potentially be triple what it is right now, which makes the timing of these new restrictions make more sense if the NBA is serious about wanting its best players to play.
This might be my grand “old man on a cloud” moment, but my biggest question is: What data is the NBA using to debunk load management? What does this study look like?
I’m not saying the NBA is wrong–they very easily could be right!–but let’s make the data public. It’s difficult to prove that load management (or the lack thereof) prevented or caused certain injuries because freak injuries happen. But that’s my hypothesis … and that’s why studies are done about a billion things. I am also one for looking at data because I’m a numbers guy, and this is also a highly sensitive leaguewide topic coming from a very important league official. So let’s see the data!
NBA players also want to play games, but “load management” is decided by teams and support staff–not players–in the majority of cases. I’m all for wanting the best NBA players to play more games, but this is a very fascinating report that I want to dive deeper into, should the data be made public.
What do you think? Could this change the landscape of how certain teams operate? Let us know in the comments!
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