Last month in a ballroom at the Peninsula Chicago Hotel, Joe Dumars had the NBA’s 30 head coaches sitting upright in their chairs, if not on the edge of their seats.
Dumars, the league’s vice president of basketball operations, was at the annual coaches meeting to present results of a study that contradicted everything every person in that room had said every time he was asked to tell fans explain why the All-Stars or several All-Stars on his team did not play on a particular night due to “load management”.
These insights? According to several trainers present, the load management is not working as intended.
“The coaches obviously paid attention to (what Dumars said),” Cavaliers coach JB Bickerstaff said.
Whether all 30 bought it is another question.
Over the past six months, the NBA’s front office, led by commissioner Adam Silver, has made a rapid departure from a practice that has been practiced across the league for years and largely still is: resting players whose bodies are overworked to prevent injuries.
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The league, with support from the players’ union, has tied eligibility for postseason awards to the number of games played and implemented a new policy that limits how and when teams can rest healthy players.
Silver changed his mind in September, suggesting that the data was inconclusive on load management, and on Wednesday (apparently also behind closed doors on the Peninsula) Dumars went much further.
“It just doesn’t show that rest, player retirements are accompanied by the absence of injuries, fatigue or anything like that,” Dumars said Wednesday.
That message is met with a mix of tacit approval and skepticism from coaches who believe the league’s ethos needs a reset and from those who believe in the science their team doctors use to guide their decisions.
Dumars and the NBA front office want teams – players, coaches and general managers – to care more about the regular season, whether it’s making stars available for more of the 82 scheduled games or making more of the All-Star Game make an effort or take care of the new in-season tournament that will take place for the first time.
League officials acknowledge that part of the push is ongoing negotiations for a new multibillion-dollar national TV contract, but they also say putting an inferior product on the market is bad business.
“We don’t need our TV partners telling us that competition will get worse when teams sit players out and when players don’t try out for an All-Star Game,” Evan Wasch, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball strategy, said Wednesday . “It’s incredibly obvious to us and ultimately we’re trying to serve the fans. Yes, the fact that we are negotiating TV contracts here in the next year or two becomes even more important because we are in the middle of these discussions.
“But we can see for ourselves that these were issues that needed to be addressed independently of outside (influence).”
This newfound battle against “load management” is part of it, but the argument that science no longer supports it is explicitly new to the 30 teams that have hired data scientists and medical professionals to use science to determine when a Players should sit out a game.
“It’s just PR,” an NBA coach told The Athletic who was granted anonymity so he could speak freely about the meeting with Dumars. “There are many other studies that show that load management is useful from an injury and recovery perspective.”
Brooklyn Nets coach Jacque Vaughn added: “I don’t want to see any of these guys fired. I still want them to have employment and I will continue to listen to them and read their reports and they have a degree and I value the degree.”
No team has ever shared their data publicly to support load management. The league is not yet ready to release the new information Dumars cites, but that day could come soon.
Depending on how strictly the league holds teams to the new rest period restriction policy, and how brazen those teams want to be in exploiting loopholes in the policy, circumstances could arise where the league office comes after the teams for distorted interpretations of the same data bits. This could get sticky.
A former NBA sports science director, who was granted anonymity so he could speak freely without fear of repercussions, said the science surrounding load management is “not yet proven” — one way or the other.
“If we all wait for this to be evidence-based and science to support it, we will be doing it in 10 years,” the former sports science director said. “That’s how long it takes to receive our research. And then the next research disproves it. So we are early adopters in elite sport and can hardly wait for science and research. We can use and apply the concepts of basic science. But if we wait for evidence, we’ve missed something. We got fired because we weren’t always one step ahead of the competition.”
Bickerstaff added on Thursday: “It doesn’t just depend on coaching decisions. These are organizational decisions that are made in most cases. Some of them are player-led or whatever it may be. But most of these decisions are organizational decisions to find ways to keep guys healthy for as long as possible during the regular season.”
Before and after several NBA exhibition games on Thursday, The Athletic asked coaches for their reaction to Dumars’ comments. In addition to pointing out that scientific data no longer supports “load management,” Dumars has said the league wants to “re-establish” a culture where “every player wants to play 82 games.”
Dumars, a six-time NBA All-Star while playing for the “Bad Boys” Detroit Pistons in the 1980s and 1990s, earned plenty of nods from self-described “old school” coaches.
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“I love it,” said Washington Wizards coach Wes Unseld Jr., who grew up in the NBA while his father played and coached in the league. “I think it’s great for the league.”
Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, a former All-Star and champion with the Pistons as a player, said: “I’ve always felt that way anyway. You can only convince me if the science and the numbers say so, because I have to respect that. These things are smarter than me. But my eyes tell me otherwise, and my experience and my career tell me otherwise.”
Hornets coach Steve Clifford, an NBA coach for 23 years, agrees: “I don’t think anyone is against guys sitting when they’re injured or at an advanced stage in their careers it is wiser for them not to play” the second night of consecutive nights or four of five nights. Nobody is against it. But let’s be honest: that’s not the case.”
What Clifford is suggesting, and he wouldn’t be the only one, is that players are too often rested as a precaution when they are otherwise healthy.
“My first year as head coach in Charlotte, we played 23 sets in a row; I never thought about sitting anyone out,” Clifford said. “If Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson didn’t play every night, we wouldn’t have a chance to win; They played every time unless they were injured.”
23 years later, 30 NBA teams are trying to win a championship (either immediately or at some point), and they’ve all engaged in some form of “load management.” Do they simply evaporate their data like a chalk throw from LeBron James because of the NBA’s new data? It’s unlikely.
“It’s funny, I tell my boys all the time that I’m old school and new school,” said Vaughn, who played 12 NBA seasons since 1997. “So the old school in me, I saw Joe Dumars play and appreciated that he tried to make every single game about wanting to get the league back on track. I definitely appreciate that. When I played, it was an honor that we tried to play 82 games. This is what you practiced and molded and looked up to and wanted to do.
“I’m also a novice in a way, in that I think our performance team has put together some science and believes in it, and there’s a little bit of both. And they can work together – interlock – for the benefit of the athlete.”
Bickerstaff, who like Unseld grew up in the NBA while his father Bernie was an excellent head coach, agreed with Vaughn that both sides of the argument can be true.
“I think it depends on how it’s presented,” Bickerstaff said. “I’m not trying to take issue with the NBA, but it’s also a fact that fatigue can lead to injuries. So I think it’s up to us to figure out how to protect our people. But it is also our responsibility to do our best for this league.”
Billy Donovan, Bulls coach and NBA head coach since 2015, said “load management” is more about “people management” than injury prevention:
“I don’t know if it’s so much about the injury part of load management. I think what happens when a man gets tired for a long period of time but the schedule is set for someone. Sometimes it’s hard for this guy to get back to the level he’s used to playing at without some rest. Because everyone has it.
“There are just times in the schedule when you know that that 10-day, two-week period is going to be difficult when it comes to organizing the trip. Back to back and things like that. So I think the information from what (the NBA) got back is pretty clear that it doesn’t necessarily prevent injuries.”
— The Athletic’s Jason Quick contributed from Portland, Oregon; Josh Robbins contributed from Washington, DC; and Darnell Mayberry contributed from Chicago.
(Photos by Jacque Vaughn, Chauncey Billups and JB Bickerstaff: Getty Images)