NBA new war against load management is all about the money / News - Basketnews.com

NBA recently introduced a new policy aimed at reducing the load management practice. The timing of the decision makes it clear that the league is thinking, first and foremost, about the next TV deal, which might influence mightily the competitiveness of the teams moving forward.

Credit: AP-SCANPIX Credit AP-SCANPIX

One of the most frequent criticisms the NBA faces is the lack of interest in the regular season.

Many fans in the United States and the rest of the world have often complained that the regular season is not engaging enough, that there are too many games in which the quality is relatively low, and that several teams have no genuine interest in improving their record.

The load management issue has been added to these classic criticisms in recent years.

NBA franchises have begun with some frequency to hold some of their stars out to allow them to rest, even though they may not necessarily have been plagued by physical problems that would have prevented them from playing the game.

Since this type of precautionary rest was also used in games that would go live nationally, the issue became even more central to the daily debate around the NBA. Until recently, the league did not seem particularly concerned about the load management issue.

Last February, during the All-Star Game held in Salt Lake City, Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, commented this way on criticism of excessive use of load management:

"This year, we're going to likely break the all-time record for ticket sales, we're likely going to have the all-time record for season-ticket renewals. So our fans aren't necessarily suggesting that they're that upset with the product that we're presenting," Silver explained back then.

However, the situation seems to have changed dramatically in less than a year. A few weeks ago, the NBA board announced the approval of the new Player Participation Policy. This measure specifically serves to curb the use of the practice of load management.

When this new policy was approved, commissioner Adam Silver's words were very different from those he used in February.

"There's a sense from all the different constituent groups in the league that this is ultimately about the fans, and we've taken this too far," Silver said to explain the decision.

"This is an acknowledgment that it's gotten away from us a bit, and that, particularly, I think when you see young, healthy players who are resting and it becomes maybe, even more, a notion of stature around the league as opposed to absolute needed rest, or it's part of being an NBA player that you rest on certain days."

Adam SilverCredit AP – Scanpix

To try to understand what could have led the NBA to make such a change in a few months, first, we need to analyze what kind of changes this new policy will bring.

According to the Player Participation Policy, NBA franchises will not be allowed to rest more than one star in a single game. The obvious concern here is injuries and overloading players, this policy could seriously impact the NBA odds as it will give the lesser ranked teams a smaller chance of victory – as well as this, how do you define who is a star?

Well, according to the NBA, a star is one who has been an All-Star or has been part of an All-NBA team in any of the last three seasons.

The new policy also requires that teams must ensure that their stars are present for both live national and new In-Season Tournament games and that there must be a balance for star absences between home and away games, trying to give a preference to keeping the star out in home games.

The NBA wanted to curb the choice of franchises to hold out their stars in the later part of the season to try to position themselves in a better situation for the draft.

For example, last season, the Wizards held out Bradley Beal for the final 10 games of the regular season for what the team had called a "knee discomfort," while the Trail Blazers had held out Damian Lillard for the final 11 games of the season for a right calf soreness.

Overall, the NBA has sent a very clear message to all teams: resting essentially healthy players from now on will only be possible under certain conditions.

It is intended to bring back to the center the importance of the regular season and especially the presence of the stars on the court. But why now? Why was there a need to take such restrictive measures when only a few months ago, the NBA seemed not to be so concerned about the load management issue?

First of all, there is an element of status. The NBA is the most popular league in the world primarily because it has the world's top players in it. If those players remain seated, even during games that go live nationally, the NBA risks losing that status it has earned over the years.

For some time now, many fans have complained about the absence of their favorite stars after spending hundreds of dollars to go see a game live.

The NBA now wants to reaffirm that this is a league where 82 games are played, and therefore, the best players must be available in a good portion of those games unless there are really serious injuries.

The feeling that load management was gaining too much momentum was now evident in recent seasons. Looking only at last season, of the players who finished on the first two All-NBA teams, only Jayson Tatum played more than 70 games (74, to be precise).

Jayson TatumCredit AP-Scanpix

The 15 players who made up the three All-NBA teams last season missed a total of 228 games out of the 1230 that were available.

Certainly, some of those games were missed because of serious injuries that required that player's absence. Still, there were also many cases of games missed because the franchises wanted to rest one of their key players at that particular time.

The league specifically wants to intervene in those situations where more than one star was held off in the same game, thus taking away much of the interest around that game. Of course, NBA franchises see it differently.

Their stars are their main investment, so they want to preserve it as much as possible. Especially for those teams that want to win the title, the most important part of the season is the playoffs, not the regular season.

For them, the key is to get their stars in the best possible condition during the playoffs, not to win 5 or 10 more games in the regular season.

But the NBA is also, above all, a business, and as such, it has to put on the best show possible, and this can only happen if the best players are present in most games.

And here we come to another important issue: the economic/financial aspect. One of the motivations for the NBA to act on this issue now is the impending expiration of the current television contract with ESPN and Warner Bros Discovery, which will expire at the end of the 2024-25 season.

The league will, therefore, have to negotiate a new TV deal for the future, and while there have been no public signals, certainly the TV partners were not happy to see the league's top stars sitting in during live national games.

In recent years, NBA franchises have been able to spend an increasing amount due to the growing salary cap. Much of the growth in the salary cap was tied precisely to the billion-dollar television contract that the NBA signed in 2014.

But to allow this to continue, the new television contract will have to be of an even higher caliber. Until recently, it was almost a foregone conclusion that this scenario would come true, but the situation now leaves a little more doubt.

Disney, ESPN's parent company, has been making considerable layoffs recently. In addition, many regional sports networks, which for years have funded the NBA's chests with multimillion-dollar deals, are now close to bankruptcy, with the franchises poised to experiment with a direct streaming model, seeking to expand their fan base.

The Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz were the first two franchises to announce this new policy, but the feeling is that many others will soon follow in their footsteps.

With negotiations for the next television contract already in place, the NBA's choice to tackle the load management problem head-on seems more a necessity dictated by the moment than by any real conviction that this is the only viable path.

All of the recent moves made by the NBA aim to improve the regular season product and make it more enjoyable for the public: the play-in, the new in-season tournament, the rule that the MVP must have played at least 65 regular season games, and now the new policy that aims to limit load management.

Nikola JokicCredit AP Photo/David Zalubowski

If NBA franchises consider the playoffs more important, the league, on the other hand, is aiming to restore centrality to the regular season. Knowing that the NBA wants to get more money from broadcasters in the following television contract, it must make a regular season more appealing.

However, emphasizing that the NBA is a league with 82 regular season games also brings problems.

Keeping such a high number of games, even adding the in-season tournament and expecting stars to rest almost never risks increasing the number of injuries.

The natural solution actually would be there, and that would be to reduce the number of games, perhaps going down to 70 games.

But this hypothesis is something the NBA as a league has no desire to consider at the moment because it would mean losing millions of dollars in revenues each year.

Fewer games equals less money, and no one within the league wants to lose money: not the owners, not the players, and not even those who work off through the organization of games.

For a league that has always been among the most "progressive" ever and has greatly increased its investment in sports science in recent years, this move against load management has a somewhat populist flavor: to please the fans who want to see their favorite players on the court all the time.

In the long run, this operation could backfire on the NBA, but when it comes to business, there is no particular thought to be given: money first, then everything else.

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