Many NBA coaches don’t buy what Joe Dumars sells on load management

In the ballroom of the Peninsula Chicago last month, Joe Dumars had the 30 NBA coaches sitting upright in their chairs, if not on the edge of their seats.

Dumars, the league’s vice president of basketball operations, was on hand at the coaches’ annual meeting to present the results of a study that contradicted everything everyone in that room had said every time he was asked to explain to fans why an All-Star or basketball championship was won. Several of his team’s stars were not playing on a given night due to “load management.”

Those results? Download Manager not working as intended, According to several coaches who were in the room.

““Obviously the coaches were paying attention (to what Dumars said),” Cavaliers coach J.B. Bickerstaff said.

Whether all thirty bought it or not is another matter.

Over the past six months, the NBA’s front office, led by Commissioner Adam Silver, has been engaged in a headlong race away from the practice that had been, and largely still is, embraced across the league for many years: resting players whose bodies are in tatters. . exhausting to It is forbidden of them from injury.

The league, with support from the players union, tied eligibility for postseason awards to the number of games played and instituted a new policy restricting how and when teams can rest healthy players.

Silver changed his tune in September, noting that the data was inconclusive on load management, and on Wednesday (also, apparently, behind closed doors on the peninsula) Domar went much further.

““It doesn’t show that rest, sending players out, is associated with less injuries, less fatigue or anything like that,” Dumars said on Wednesday.

This message has been met with a mixture of tacit approval and skepticism from coaches who believe the league’s ethos needs a reboot, and from those who believe in the science their team doctors use to help make informed decisions.

Dumars and the NBA’s front office want teams — players, coaches and general managers — to care more about the regular season, whether that means making stars available for more than the 82 scheduled games, putting in a greater effort in the All-Star Game, or just taking care of it. The new seasonal tournament that will be held for the first time.

League officials acknowledge that part of the push is ongoing negotiations over a new multibillion-dollar national television contract, but they also say it’s a bad idea to put a lower-quality product on the floor.

“We don’t need our television partners to tell us that when teams sit players, when players don’t try to make the All-Star Game, that it makes for a worse competition,” said Evan Wash, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball strategy. Wednesday. “It’s very clear to us, and at the end of the day we’re trying to serve the fans. Yes, as we’re negotiating TV deals in the next year or two here, it takes on even more importance because we’re in the middle of those conversations.

“But we can determine for ourselves that these are issues that need to be addressed independent of any external (influence).”

This new fight against “load management” is part of that, but saying the science no longer supports it is new. The 30 teams that have hired data scientists and medical professionals for the express purpose of using science to determine when a player should miss a game.

“It’s just PR,” one NBA coach said. The athlete, who was granted anonymity so that he could speak freely about the meeting with Dumars. “There are plenty of other studies that prove that load management makes sense from an injury and recovery standpoint.”

Brooklyn Nets coach Jacque Vaughn added: “I don’t want to fire any of these guys. “I still want them to be hired and I still will listen to them and read their reports and they have degrees and I value their degree.”

No team has ever publicly shared their data to support load management. The league isn’t yet ready to release the new information Dumars cites, but that day could come soon.

Meanwhile, depending on how tightly the league keeps teams in compliance with the new policy restricting rest, and how aggressively those teams exploit loopholes in the policy, circumstances could arise in which the league office pits teams against teams over skewed interpretations of the same bits of data. It can get sticky.

The science behind load management “has not yet been proven” — in either direction, said the former NBA sports science director, who was granted anonymity so he could speak freely without fear of repercussions.

“For example, if we were all waiting for this to be evidence-based and backed by science, we would be doing this 10 years from now,” the former sports science director said. “That’s how long it takes to do our research. And then the next paper refutes that. So, in elite sports, we’re early adopters, we can’t wait for science and research. We can use basic science concepts and apply them. But if we wait for evidence, we’ve missed out.” “We were fired because we didn’t stay ahead of the curve.”

“It’s not just coaching decisions,” Bickerstaff added on Thursday. “These are organizational decisions that are made in most cases. Some of them are player-led or whatever. But most of these decisions are organizational decisions to find ways to keep players healthy for as long as possible in the season.” ordinary.

Before and after many NBA games on Thursday, The athlete He asked the coaches for their reaction to Dumars’ comments. Not only did Dumars suggest that scientific data no longer supports “load management,” he also said the league wants to “reestablish” a culture where “every player should want to play 82 games.”

Dumars, who was a six-time NBA All-Star when he played for the Detroit Pistons’ “Bad Boys” in the 1980s and 1990s, has received plenty of praise from coaches who consider themselves “old school.”

““I love it,” said Washington Wizards coach Wes Unseld Jr., who grew up in the NBA while his father starred and coached in the league. “I think it’s great for the league.”

“I’ve always felt that way anyway,” said Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups, a former All-Star and Pistons champion as a player. “The only way you can convince me is if the science and the numbers say that because I have to respect that. This stuff is smarter than I am.” But my eyes are telling me something different, and my career is telling me something different.

Hornets coach Steve Clifford, who has been an NBA coach for 23 years, agrees: “I don’t think anyone is against players sitting out when they get hurt or they’re at an older stage in their career where it’s smarter for them not to play the second night back to back or four nights in five nights. Nobody’s against that. But let’s Face it and be honest now: that’s not what happens.

What Clifford suggests, and he wouldn’t be alone, is that players are often rested as a precaution when they’re healthy.

“In my first year as head coach in Charlotte, we played 23 straight sets; “I never thought about excluding anyone,” Clifford said. “If Kemba Walker and Al Jefferson didn’t play every night, we wouldn’t have a chance to win. They played every time unless they got hurt.

Twenty-three years later, there are thirty NBA teams trying (either immediately or eventually) to win a championship, and all of them have embraced “load management” in one form or another. Are they just skimping on their data like a chalk throw from LeBron James because of new NBA data? This is unlikely.

“It’s funny, I tell my guys all the time I’m old school, new school,” said Vaughn, who played 12 seasons in the NBA, starting in 1997. “So the old school in me, I watched Joe Dumars play and I appreciated that.” He has tried to suit every game, and he wants to get the league back on that path. I certainly appreciate that. It was a badge of honor when I played that we tried to play 82 games. This is what you practice, shape, aspire to and want to do.

“I’m also new school, in the sense that I believe there’s some science that our performance team has put together and believes in, and there’s a little bit of both. They can work together — intertwined — in order to improve an athlete’s condition.

Bickerstaff, who like Unseld grew up around the NBA while his father, Bernie, was a decorated head coach, echoed Vaughn in that both sides of the argument could be valid.

““I think it has to do with how you frame it,” Bickerstaff said. “I’m not trying to, you know, get into a fight with the NBA, but it’s also a reality that fatigue can lead to injury. So I think that’s where we have to figure out how do we protect our guys? But it’s also our responsibility to We are giving our best in this league.”

Billy Donovan, the Bulls’ head coach and NBA coach since 2015, said “load management” is more about “people management” than injury prevention:

“I don’t know if load management has a lot to do with the injury part. I think what happens is when a guy feels fatigued for a period of time, and with that, someone’s schedule is set. Sometimes it’s hard for that guy, without some rest, To get back to the level he used to play at, because everyone has that.

“There are times within the schedule where you know the 10-day period, or the two-week period, is going to be tough in terms of how to set up travel; getting back to backs and those types of things. So I think the information is pretty clear from what (the NBA) has gotten that it doesn’t necessarily prevent injury.

— The Athletic’s Jason Quick contributed from Portland, Oregon. Josh Robbins contributed from Washington, D.C.; and Darnell Mayberry contributed from Chicago.

(Photos by Jack Vaughn, Chauncey Billups, and J.B. Bickerstaff: Getty Images)