Is Load Management Good For The NBA?

sports.yahoo.com

With Kawhi Leonard sitting out multiple games in the early portion of the 2019-20 NBA season, the debate on whether "load management" is good or bad for the league had been revived. In previous years the arguments had never brought about any real resolve.
Some contended that it was bad for fanfare and television ratings, while others stated that it served to the benefit of players who have a history of sustaining injuries, making load management a helpful tool in reducing the odds of recurrence. When LeBron James sat out games in the 2017 season, he was criticized by some for the disservice to fans who paid a hefty price to see him play up close, while others defended him, encouraging him to rest games for the sake of longevity.
With Kawhi Leonard last year, he was mostly left unopposed for sitting out for a quarter's worth of the season, as he was recovering from an undisclosed injury that had kept him out for basically all of the season prior. A knee injury that lingered throughout the postseason further justified the extra rest. This season, however, the feeling is different. The general thought process contends that Kawhi Leonard at this point should be completely healthy, or at the very least healthy enough to not sit out of two of the first eight games of the season.

The big thing here is that nobody would be wrong in the stance that they take. You would be justified standing on any side of the spectrum in this long standing debate. It is here where the problem really lies, because the answer to the question posed in the headline is nearly impossible to distinguish. It is all based on the perspective by which you value the situation.
Load management is bad for the NBA's business. The more star players opt not to play in back to backs and sit out, the more likely fans are to take that into account when deliberating on whether or not they should buy tickets to games or tune in on television to watch the games, and ultimately decide to do something else with their evenings, which would foresee the league making less money on an annual basis.
That notwithstanding, load management is great for individual teams around the league. Periodically resting star players (or any of the regular rotation players in general) not only grants players a better chance to recover from lingering injuries and/or rejuvenate from fatigue, but it also provides their teams with the opportunity to run minutes to other players that they wish to develop, and evaluate the potential contributions they can make in the short and long term future.
As a fan, I want all players to be healthy for as long as possible, and sustain it especially for the playoffs. But admittedly, it puts a damper on my experience as a fan when I purchase a ticket weeks in advance to go see Kawhi Leonard lead the Clippers into a showdown with Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, only for Kawhi to end up not playing despite appearing healthy enough to do so.

The real question we need to ask ourselves is how do we make load management work for everyone, because teams are going to continue to rest their players as they see fit. The league shouldn't outlaw resting players, because as a business, employee satisfaction and health should be a priority, even if it involves measurements that cost them financially. However, they shouldn't just force fans to deal with it, because that would likely cost them even more. This is a situation where the league needs to start looking for a middle ground on which teams, players, and fans can meet with them, and come to a mutual agreement on how to approach load management, should it become a growing trend across the league. Fortunately for the NBA, it doesn't appear that it will. Outside of specific matters (Kawhi Leonard, Joel Embiid, Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson when they return, etc.), everyone seems to be on the same page: if you're healthy enough to play, you'll play. It is still early though, so we'll see what happens.

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