The NBA Was Right About Load Management, But Not Anymore

Load management means something different now than it did a few years ago

When someone talks about “the NBA’s load management problem,” what (or who) do you first think of? Kawhi Leonard playing half of the regular season? Joel Embiid missing back-to-backs? The KD/Kyrie/Harden Era Nets giving one of their stars the night off?

All three of those thoughts would have been correct, though you could argue that only two of them are still the case. Teams would rest players (sometimes, seemingly, at random) with the idea that doing so would reduce the risk of injury, which sounds good in theory.

Then, the NBA came out with a 57-page report saying that load management, in its current state, didn’t work — and they were right. The correlation between regular rest (or even rest from soreness) and injury disappears entirely when you take into account games played, schedule, and even players’ ages.

Today, we’re faced with a different kind of load management, more aptly called “extended injury management.” And so far, the teams have been right, and the NBA has been dead wrong.

Note: Massive thanks to the awesome Chris Gunther of Charting Hoops for helping me collect a lot of this data!¹