Today the NBA's Board of Governors unanimously approved a new Player Participation Policy that will replace the Player Participation Policy implemented prior to the 2017-18 season. The new policy is a six page document, but the short version is that the NBA has defined a "star" as any player who has been selected as an All-Star or as an All-NBA Team member within the past three seasons, and the NBA has set forth conditions such that teams will face financial penalties if star players are held out of games without having a documented injury. The policy includes numerous exceptions, so it will be interesting to see if teams attempt to find ways to avoid consequences for resting their star players. While this policy focuses on punishing teams, it should be noted that the new Collective Bargaining Agreement stipulates that players who appear in fewer than 65 games will be ineligible for several major awards, including regular season MVP; the NBA expects and hopes that the possibility of losing the opportunity to receive individual awards will motivate star players to earn the money that they are paid from their guaranteed contracts.
There is no credible evidence that load management works in terms of increasing a team's chances for playoff success. There is also no credible evidence that load management enhances player safety, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver admitted this during his press conference announcing the new policy: "I said this before, if the science were clearer that players should be resting, we would be favoring it," Silver said. The NBA has been damaged by "stat gurus" who use "advanced basketball statistics" to promote load management, tanking, and the notion that the only good shots are dunks and three pointers; it is past time that the league office reassert authority over the game. The limitations of "advanced basketball statistics" have been glaringly apparent for quite some time, but the "stat gurus" who make money off of their proprietary numbers have been quite effective in squelching informed discussion about their biased and flawed thinking.
The NBA was a much better and more entertaining league when load management and tanking did not exist, because players used to consider it a badge of honor to play all 82 games. It is sad that the NBA has to keep changing policies and rules to force healthy players to play, but this is symptomatic of a larger societal problem: too many people have an inflated sense of entitlement. Playing in the NBA is a privilege, not a right, and responsibilities are attached to that privilege for each NBA player--responsibilities to the league, to the sponsors and media outlets that fund the league, to the team that pays you, to your teammates, and to the fans. Instead of taking those responsibilities seriously, too many players act as if they are entitled to receive generational wealth in exchange for minimal effort.
This sense of entitlement permeates Team USA, and goes a long way toward explaining Team USA's frequent failures in FIBA events: USA Basketball often acts as if Team USA is entitled to win as opposed to behaving as if building a winning team is a serious responsibility; it is often evident that either the coaching staff is not familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of opposing teams or that the players ignore the defensive game plan; superstar players feel entitled both to be selected to Team USA and also to skip some events (such as the FIBA World Cup) without losing their roster spots; American NBA players struggle to adjust to FIBA's physical play and to adversity in general, because in the NBA they are pampered every step of the way on and off of the court.
It has been five years since an American-born player won the NBA regular season MVP--and that player (James Harden) is vastly overrated by "stat gurus" and by media members who lack the intellectual rigor (or the courage) to push back when Daryl Morey made the ludicrous, demonstrably false assertion that Harden is a better scorer than Michael Jordan. Commentators like J.J. Redick and Amin Elhassan made ignorant, derogatory statements about the players who built the league, when the reality is that today's players would likely struggle if they were teleported into previous eras: are we supposed to believe that coddled American players who cannot win a medal in the FIBA World Cup would fare well versus Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, and other all-time greats? The excess dribbling and showboating that is praised today would have been received quite differently in decades past: referees would not have tolerated much of the nonsense that is permitted today, and any player showboating his way into the paint would be more likely to be counting his missing teeth than counting on being rewarded with two free throws.
Commissioner Silver and the team owners have the right idea that load management is a pox on the game, but the rot that has set in to the sport is so deeply rooted that I fear it will be difficult to fix.