NBA
Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards criticizes players who rest during NBA regular season: “Just play, man”
Antonio is a life long sports enthusiast and professional journalist, who shares an obssesive urge to find and dig up the most interesting facts to guide gamblers towards more exciting, yet safe bets. In his own words, ''you can never really know enough about the things you love''.
All posts by Antonio KozlowUpdated20 Feb 2023
Load management has been quite the recurrent issue in the NBA lately, as coaches continue to struggle with the intense regular season schedule trying their best to play their best athletes every night, but finds it impossible to avoid injuries and accumulated fatigue.
As Minnesota guard Anthony Edwards was heading towards his first All-Star Game this past Sunday, one reporter asked him if he had the ability to change one thing about the NBA, what would it be. The Timberwolves pondered over the question, saying there really isn’t much he’d do except for one thing.
“Probably just all the guys sitting, resting,” Edwards answered in reference to load management. “That’s the only thing I probably don’t like. Just play, man. If you’re 80%, 70 – you gotta play. I don’t like all the sitting, missing games and stuff like that. These people might have enough money to come to one game, you know what I’m saying? That might be the game they come to and then you’re sitting out.”
For the shooting guard, who dropped 12 points in 17 minutes for Team Giannis last night, believes this is not only an issue the league has to solve, but mostly the players. “I take pride in trying to play every game because you never know if there’s one fan that might never seen me play and I’m trying to play.”
Watch the interview for yourself in the following tweet:
https://twitter.com/WUTangKids/status/1627138675325689862?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Edwards took the time to help us all remember that the fans are the most important thing and it’s who the NBA should look to please.
NBA Comissioner Adam Silver doesn’t believe load management is an NBA problem
We’ve witnessed this issue a lot as NBA fans. Back in 2020, we can all remember how the Los Angeles Clippers had no choice but to rest stars Paul George and Kawhi Leonard, especially at the end of the campaign when they were needed the most. Other veterans like Anthony Davis or LeBron James seem to need the rest in order to perform at their best when they are expected on court.
However, NBA Comissioner Adam Silver “doesn’t buy into” percieving load management as a real issue in the NBA. “There is real medical and scientific data about what’s approapriate,” he said. “To me the premise of the question as to whether players are playing enough, suggests that they should be playing more.”
Watch as Silver addresses the issue in Sunday’s press conference in Salt Lake City:
During the 2020/21 season, the NBA decided that healthy players were not allowed to sit out during nationally televised matches, or even during road games, unless unusual circumstances are present. Although it’s not clear which are those circumstances, we understand that the emphasis is on the contests that are on National TV.
After that sentence by the NBA, teams will be fined with at least $100,000 if they don’t follow that rule. It seems this is an issue Timberwolves’ fans won’t have to worry about with Edwards, who has become a star next to Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns, just being a 21-year-old.
Nevertheless, one thing is to be young and full of energy, and the other is to be LeBron James at 38-years of age. So, load management will still be an issue left to resolve in the NBA, as teams must strategize to find a way to get their athletes to play the most out of the 82-game regular season.
