Load management is a seemingly common practice in the NBA these days, and many people don’t like it. However, when a player has chronic injury problems, it isn’t easy to accurately say that he is simply lazy when he sits out games that he could’ve played in.
That is the predicament Philadelphia 76ers star center Joel Embiid finds himself in. He has played in just four of a possible games so far this season, and therefore it isn’t too much of a surprise that his team is 3-13.
Embiid has been criticized by many for years, not just for practicing load management but also for supposedly being lazy and unprofessional. Legendary Los Angeles Lakers center Shaquille O’Neal took him to task for not playing in back-to-back games during an episode of “The Big Podcast” when O’Neal discussed the situation with Alonzo Mourning (h/t Lakers Daily).
“This era’s not physical,” O’Neal said. “So I don’t know why you’re not playing back-to-backs.”
“That’s the only problem I have with it,” O’Neal added. “You shoot a heavy amount of jumpers. You don’t really get banged up a lot in the post. Why are you not playing back-to-backs?”
Embiid does have a history of knee injuries, which makes his situation a little different from most players who may sit out or want to sit out games when they’re healthy for load management.
But O’Neal and Mourning were quick to remind fans that they played in a more physical and much more slow-paced era where there was more contact. Back in the 1990s and 2000s, the mere thought of a player sitting out a game when healthy for rest was unacceptable.
Load management has become such a problem for the NBA that the league tried to address it last season by instituting a minimum number of games players had to appear in to be eligible for some awards at the end of the season. But it doesn’t seem to have done enough.
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