The NBA recently announced an investigation into the Philadelphia 76ers for load-managing superstar center Joel Embiid, who revealed last week his intention to “never play back-to-back [games] for the rest of my career.” Load management is the practice of resting players for certain games in order to decrease stress on their bodies and keep them from injury. The league has its financial reasons to disincentivize load management of star players — namely, that star players are the major draw of the NBA. Games without stars tend to lack competitive weight, generating less fan interest, which can result in lower television ratings or ticket sales.
Yet, I believe the prevalent practice of load management reveals a structural problem with the NBA’s regular season: There are simply too many regular season games and too many playoff spots. Since the addition of the play-in tournament in 2020, ten out of 16 teams in each conference make the playoffs. In other sports, teams can win championships with their best player injured, but basketball is different. When the best player goes down for the season, the team’s title hopes are entirely dashed. For this reason, good teams have incentive to rest their star players if they are known to be injury prone. This helps guarantee their good health during the postseason — which itself lasts for two arduous months. For inner-circle title contenders like the 76ers, their championship-geared roster depth allows them to rest Embiid on a night-to-night basis with no risk.
The majority of fans do not care if a random role player takes nights off to manage injuries, but there is an expectation that superstars should be available every single night — playing extreme minutes to boot. Some stars can handle this load, but others cannot. It’s simply a matter of physiology that some players cannot handle the grind of playing their style of basketball over an 82-game season without serious injury complications. These sorts of players have injuries which never truly heal but can be managed intelligently to maximize peak performance time. Embiid is one of those players, capable of being the most dominant player in the league on a night-to-night basis, but perpetually limited by his propensity for nagging knee injuries.
This dynamic leads to narratives about players lacking competitive drive — narratives which I don’t believe in, but will persist as long as players try to prioritize their health. For this reason, I really do sympathize with Embiid’s predicament. He has dealt with persistent injuries throughout his entire career, and never seems to be healthy in the playoffs when it matters most. This, among other unpredictable factors (like his co-star having a breakdown in the 2021 Eastern Conference Semifinals), have continually stunted his postseason success. If Embiid wants to reach the top of the mountain, he and the 76ers are right to protect his health.
It remains true that if the regular season had fewer games and fewer playoff spots, each regular season game would have greater implications, and load management as a strategy would no longer be effective. Unfortunately, the league fails to recognize this every time load management comes under scrutiny, and the Sixers will likely receive a hefty fine as a result.
