Injuries are an inevitable part of sports and can be devastating when they cost athletes major opportunities. Often, the long road to recovery is also daunting.
In recent years, professional sports teams, especially the National Basketball Association, have garnered attention by adopting an approach called load management to deal with and prevent player injuries. The strategy involves intentionally resting healthy players in certain games in order to ensure that the player is healthy during critical games.
Load management prioritizes the health and safety of players, and fans should trust that these decisions are made by medical experts to reduce injury risk while maximizing performance.
At all levels of sports, load management has always been central to injury prevention.
For example, every team in Major League Baseball has a rotation of around five starting pitchers, each of whom get a few days of rest between games to reduce injury and fatigue. With games every day and a 162-game season, rest is imperative for starting pitchers in the MLB.
Load management brings both short and long-term significant benefits for athletes. Extended rest for players results in better performance in upcoming competitions.
According to the National Institute of Health, sports injuries can be acute, happening suddenly, or chronic, resulting from overuse of a body part over a long period of time. Load management reduces overall strain on the body. Additionally, this strategy can extend a player’s career by allowing them to perform well for a longer time.
However, in the NBA, retired players, fans and media pundits have reacted negatively to use of the strategy.
One example is Kawhi Leonard, a superstar for the Los Angeles Clippers who has missed a third of the games since the start of his career in 2011. With a significant injury history, teams have chosen to rest Leonard for one of the two games when the team plays two games in two days.
Despite this, Leonard led the Toronto Raptors to a championship in 2019, demonstrating the approach’s success. The length of an 82-game NBA season causes many teams to rest their best players even when healthy to ensure that they can perform well in the postseason.
Load management also impacts the business aspect of professional sports, as leagues don’t generate as much revenue when the best players don’t play. Fans get upset over star players not playing, as some may pay for expensive tickets and travel long distances just for their idol to sit out due to injury management.
A study of 625 NBA players from 2017-2021 shows an increase in injury and more and more missed games. However, evaluating load management’s effectiveness can’t depend on this metric alone.
The increased pace of play and rise of positionless players demand far more from NBA players than ever before. In order to play professionally, athletes have to dedicate their adolescence to sports, compounding the risk of injury over decades. Even when not in competition, they follow intense training and practice regimens.
At the amateur level in high school and college, load management is much less prominent because there’s not an esmphasis on revenue, and student-athletes are usually not playing the sport year-round and full-time.
Similar to approaches taken in amateur sports, load management at the professional level maintains an athlete’s health while maximizing performance, relieving athletes, coaches and fans of the stress that comes with injury.
