Since joining the Clippers in 2019, Kawhi and PG have been often sidelined due to injuries and load management – but now with both healthy, they’re playing, and playing A LOT, in what looks to be a huge deviation from the Clippers’ previous load management strategy.
Kawhi and PG have played in all 19 games this season (including back to backs) – Kawhi racking up 653 total minutes so far, PG with 676. They are 13th and 26th respectively in total minutes played this season.
If they were to keep up this pace (and not miss a single game, which is unlikely) Kawhi would be on pace for 2821 total minutes and PG on pace for 2919 total minutes. Kawhi has averaged 1789 total minutes per season since joining the Clippers (not accounting for the entire season he missed in '21-'22), and PG has averaged only 1564 total minutes per year. They are on pace to blow past those minutes totals by the all-star break.
PG was an ironman in Indiana and OKC, in his age 22 season he played 2972 total minutes. He played 2600+ total minutes in 6 of his first 9 seasons. Kawhi on the other hand is playing an unprecedented amount of minutes, his most minutes played in a season was 2474 at age 25 with San Antonio.
This all coming on the heels of the NBA stating their data does not support that load management prevents injury and their new Player Participation policy. The Clippers too seem to have scrapped their load management strategy this season.
The Clippers are 9-10 after 19 games.
I’m trying to understand this. If Kawhi has a degenerative knee injury, then he shouldn’t be playing all these games and that it could adversely affect the end of this season, if not his career. If he doesn’t, then he was basically just missing games in previous seasons for rest and the NBA “not supporting” load management seems to be the correct course of action.
I feel like players should play if they are not injured. I kinda miss how it was way back when ~ players played every game and would only rest at the end of the season once their team’s playoff seeding was wrapped up. It is also like a different sport now and you’d think the NBA would make it easier to showcase games by removing B2Bs or something.