Adam Silver Addresses NBA Load Management Concerns At All-Star Weekend

SALT LAKE CITY – Roughly an hour before the NBA’s All-Star Saturday night events, Commissioner Adam Silver stepped to the podium in front of a packed room and delivered his annual All-Star press conference.

After expressing his gratitude for the Salt Lake City community and Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith for coming together and hosting the weekend festivities, Silver took questions that ranged from the upcoming CBA negotiations to possible expansion in the future.

The vast majority of his presser centered on the NBA’s current plans to address ‘load management,’ or players being inactive for resting purposes. With superstars resting on back-to-backs in various road cities the last few years, it has become a main topic around the league and a major grievance among fans – particularly across social media platforms. The number of games missed by box-office athletes, particularly in those settings where local fans have limited opportunities to see their favorites, is just one of many reasons you’re seeing older generations speak poorly on the current product.

Regarding load management, Silver claimed the NBA league office is always in dialogue with the Players Association (NBPA), the labor union representing the league’s athletes, as they work together to find potential solutions.

The NBA’s intense and enervating 82-game schedule is the root of the problem. Due to the fear of losing revenue (at the arena level and through television networks), trimming the schedule by 5-10 games has typically been a non-starter for the league office and the team’s operating governors.

When asked Saturday if there had been any change in focus on moving away from the 82-game grind, the commissioner didn’t remove it from the table. But he did make sure to bring up the 2021 season that featured 72 games and how teams reacted to it.

“I’ll never say never ever,” Silver said about cutting a few games from the future schedule. “It’s interesting. You’ll recall only two seasons ago coming out of the bubble, we played a 72-game season. Now, the footprint was slightly smaller, but it was an interesting experiment because it didn’t change team behavior all that much in terms of the focus on load and players. To your point, it’s not just game play, but teams deciding not to practice, teams deciding to do whatever they can to maintain players being in an optimal position to compete during games. It is an ongoing conversation with the Players Association. This isn’t a new issue. There’s nothing particularly happening this season that we haven’t seen happening over the last several seasons.”

Now, it’ certainly worth pointing out there’s a major difference in the 2021 experiment Silver referred to and what the blueprint would resemble in a traditional season.

Immediately after the bubble ended on October 11, 2020, the NBA’s official offseason was cut extremely short. There were only 72 actual days between the Lakers being crowned champions and the next season getting underway on December 22, 2020. There was a rapid turnaround that, quite frankly, didn’t benefit anybody. So of course, teams operated out of caution and decided to tread lightly with their star players.

Compare it last year, as 2021-22 was the first ‘normal’ schedule after the league had to deal with a major adjustment period following Covid. From the night Golden State won the 2022 championship, there were 124 days between the playoff finale and start of the following season. That’s an extra 52 days players had to rejuvenate.

It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison that shouldn’t exactly be used as an argument for keeping the 82-game schedule intact. In future seasons that aren’t impacted by a pandemic, cutting the number of games (and following a traditional October to April timetable) would allow for more recovery days and team practices.

On the fan side of the ‘load management’ discussion, we’ve already seen multiple instances this season of fans of a particular player traveling to various arenas hoping to see their favorite athlete in uniform, only to discover they are ruled out. In some cases, it’s an injury or ailment they are dealing with. Other times, especially if it’s a back-to-back, the team’s medical staff is deciding to rest the star player.

Through the lens of a paying customer, it’s far from ideal. When you consider the prices of NBA tickets in some markets are growing by the year and the short turnaround between games doesn’t give you enough clarity on a player’s status, the frustration is warranted. It’s never an easy decision for a family with multiple children to purchase a group of tickets to a game, not having a clear indication if a star will be active, and hoping it doesn’t feel like a waste. In some markets, single-game tickets for a family could match or exceed a typical vacation.

That’s a tough pill to swallow. Silver isn’t blind to that reality. At this juncture, there are no correct answers or solutions for those situations.

“I understand it from a fan standpoint that if you are buying tickets to a particular game and that player isn’t playing, I don’t have a good answer for that other than this is a deep league with incredible competition,” he said. “But the mindset of our teams and players these days, as your question suggests, is that they should be optimizing performance for the playoffs.”

As he mentioned, teams are wired to compete for championships. As cold as it may feel, the franchise’s concern is geared more toward postseason success than accommodating fans during the regular season schedule. You can argue it’s often a slap in the face to the fans who support the league and provide the overwhelming share of revenue for the players and staff. But that’s just the reality of the business and situation. Teams are trying to do anything they can to preserve players for the win-or-go-home moments.

Silver made an interesting point about this, pondering if the majority of fans would choose this path versus the alternative.

“The difficulty is, fans of those teams want them to do that as well,” Silver noted on teams prioritizing the playoffs. “Just think about some of the injuries we have now going into All-Star. I think for fans, if you had said that if Steph Curry had missed these two games at this point earlier in the season, if it was that formulaic and people said, therefore, he would be healthy today and he would be here, maybe people would take that trade-off.”

Personally, this is something I hadn’t considered in regards to the load management discussion. If you were to poll a percentage of a team’s fanbase, or even the people who classify themselves as ‘player fans’ and don’t necessarily care about the team affiliation … would they rather Team X put the star players at risk by either overdoing it or letting them play through minor injuries, or maintain a long-term approach and give those players the best chance at winning a title?

To be abundantly clear — and fair to both sides — there is no guarantee that resting back-to-backs in the middle of the schedule, or missing 15 games throughout an 82-game season will allow a player to be at peak performance in April and May. There is no evidence to suggest it’s a perfect plan. But, logically, it’s a safer method than letting a player run himself into the ground.

That’s another point Silver was tackling. Contrary to the public outcry we’ve seen about players being “too soft” or how they “disrespect the game” by not making an effort to play in 80-plus games, the criticism is often directed to the wrong party.

In almost every case around the league, it’s not the player’s decision on whether they are playing in a back-to-back. It’s not the player’s decision to sit with a nagging injury, even if they could physically manage to suit up and play 30 minutes. And it’s not the player’s decision on which matchups they will be active for.

In the modern NBA, for the most part, the professional medical and training staffs are making those calls. Of course, it still requires communication from the players — how they are feeling, what pain they are dealing with, or what type of movements give them the most discomfort. After teams have thoroughly examined the player, there are many factors that play into whether or not a trainer clears that individual. The coaching staff is also heavily involved in the dialogue, and they often make sure to save a player from himself.

This isn’t the 80s or 90s anymore. It’s not the early or mid 2000s, either, where superstars such as Kobe Bryant would override the staff and choose to play through anything their body would physically allow. There’s also a reason he’s highly revered and considered a top-10 player in NBA history — largely because his mentality was unmatched. There’s also an argument to be made that his extensive playing time down the stretch of April 2013, without someone stepping in to dial it back, led to the Achilles rupture that effectively ended his superstar production at age 34.

If fans are yearning for that type of NBA, or for players to go against the medical professionals within their organization, that’s simply not going to happen. If that is the point of contention, there will never be a solution that appeases the fans. Teams are smarter in this era, thus becoming more responsible with their decisions.

Silver made it clear that it wouldn’t be in the league’s best interest to encourage players to perform while they’re hurt, to whatever degree that may be.

“The world that we used to have where it was just get out there and play through injuries, for example, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” Silver expressed. “Clearly, I mean, at the end of the day, these are human beings who many of you talk to and know well, who are often playing through enormous pain, who play through all kinds of — you know, I hesitate to label them injuries, but play through all kinds of aches and pains on a regular basis. The suggestion, I think, that these men somehow should just be out there more for its own sake, I don’t buy into.”

When he was asked directly if he believes the league’s top players are active enough, he once again stuck up for the players and noted that it’s not so cut-and-dry.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “You see, I hesitate to weigh in on an issue as to whether players are playing enough because there is real medical data and scientific data about what’s appropriate. Sometimes, to me, the premise of a question as to whether players are playing enough suggests that they should be playing more; that, in essence, there should be some notion of just ‘get out there and play.’ Having been in the league for a long time, having spent time with a lot of some of our great legends, I don’t necessarily think that’s the case.”

As commissioner of the second-most popular sports leagues in America, Silver still understands the importance of the fans’ input and hearing their point of view. He empathizes with their thoughts on players resting. But at the same time, he’s of the mindset that it’s a bit overblown.

“I think, on the other hand, there’s the fan aspect it of saying, ‘all right, if that’s going to be the case, that players are not going to be able to participate in a certain amount of games, what should the response be from the league, and how should you be presenting your product?’ It’s interesting, because even given where we are now, I don’t think the issue is quite what some suggest. I mean, our stars are not missing that many games for resting. I mean, we have injuries. I think we would all agree that’s a separate issue. But as a measure of single games missed, it’s not that bad.”

According to Silver, despite the uproar and negative comments being made about the current stars — including from certain personalities on TNT, a major national television partner with the NBA – the league is on track to sell the most tickets it ever has. As much as the load management criticism has made its rounds on social media, it really hasn’t affected the business component.

“But if we were to suggest that is going to be the case going forward (with players missing this many games), I then look at the data and think, all right, well, this year we’re going to have — we’re going to likely break the all-time record for tickets sold. We’re likely going to have the all-time record for season-ticket renewals. So our fans aren’t necessarily suggesting that they are that upset with the product that we’re presenting, and our television ratings are holding up despite the earlier question about the decline in certain traditional cable infrastructure.”

The entire conversation will ultimately require a compromise. It’s a dilemma that has no direct solution, mostly because there’s no strong correlation between a player’s workload and injury history, or future risk.

If the league is looking for a way to potentially reduce injuries and allow for rest days to be built into the schedule — all while keeping the revenue nobody wants to lose — the only solution would be to lengthening the NBA calendar. You could possibly cut (or reduce) the preseason and have teams start the season on the first Tuesday of October instead of the third. If they want to get more aggressive, the schedule could begin sometime in late September.

Not only could it help eliminate back-to-backs, but it would extend the time in which NBA discussions dominate the news cycle, which is something the league definitely cares about.

Then, the issue becomes whether or not the players would be in favor of their offseason being shortened by 2-3 weeks. No matter how you slice it, though, there will need to be some sacrifice if the schedule were to change.

Silver maintains there have been healthy conversations with the Players Association about different scenarios, but until there is enough evidence to support a change, there won’t be any direct action. He discussed how many of the injuries we see each season can be attributed to randomness, or bad luck.

“It’s something that — I don’t think we’re approaching it necessarily in an adversarial way with the Players Association,” Silver said about a potential schedule change. “We’re working collectively together with our doctors, our data scientists and trying to see if there’s an optimal way for player performance. If it means at some point we conclude that we’re better off elongating the schedule to reduce back-to-backs, for example, that’s something worth looking at. If we thought it made sense to reduce the number of games, we would. But there’s no data right now that suggests, as I said, based on some prior experiments or even as we look at the data over the course of the season and when players get injured, it isn’t — you would think that it would be the case that injuries would increase as the season goes on, and that’s not necessarily it either. It may be that there’s a fair degree of randomness in terms of when players get injured.”

In fact, he’s not wrong about the random nature of injuries. All three times Kevin Durant has sprained his MCL since 2017, it has involved a player (two teammates) falling into his legs as he stands near the basket. That has virtually nothing to do with his previous workload leading up to the game. When a player falls and hurts his wrist by breaking his fall, sprains an ankle by landing on someone’s foot after a shot, or injures his shoulder by making contact with another player, it’s extremely difficult to point to anything but terrible luck.

“I’ll say one thing, I know from talking to players, I think part of the realization these days in playing in this league is that this is a year-round pursuit now,” Silver added. “I think part of injury avoidance means how players are treating their bodies year-round, how teams are interacting with players year-round, and using the best data to conclude what is it that will allow players to stay healthy and on the floor as long as possible. That’s a very long-winded way of saying we are very focused on it. We hear it from our fans when players aren’t there. We think we can do a better job, but we don’t have a specific solution yet.”

He mentioned how, no matter what they decide to change about the system, there will still be a lot of gray area as it pertains to older veterans that need more recovery time than others. How can a league try to legislate something like this, whenever every player’s body is different and there’s a wide range of ages throughout the NBA?

“We may need to reset in a certain way in terms of expectations,” he said. “I think there are some things around the edges we can do in talking to Players Association that may create a bit more incentive for certain players. But I think there are a few prominent examples out there of certain players who have been in the league for a long time who legitimately may need an additional amount of rest on their bodies that aren’t necessarily indicative of the greater league, where you have literally the most competitive people in the world who want to be out there every night playing at full strength.”

With teams working to optimize their playoff run and championship equity, and most players wanting to elongate their careers to play around two decades, it’s going to be difficult to implement anything that changes the landscape.

As long as the NBA continues to rise in popularity, which it undoubtedly is, there might not be a reason to adjust.

“At the end, there’s a marketplace of fans who at the end of the day are the ultimate adjudicators of whether this is a product worth watching and paying for,” Silver concluded. “Right now, they’re telling us that they love the NBA, and they’re attending and watching it at record levels. But we’re very focused on it.”