Michael Jordan Says Load Management "Shouldn't Be Needed"

Michael Jordan routinely played 80 games during his career, including his golden years with the Washington Wizards, so you can already guess how he feels about load management. On the latest segment of his interview series, MJ: Insights to Excellence, celebrating the NBA’s return to NBC, Mike Tirico grills him on players needing to take nights off to preserve their bodies. “Well, it shouldn’t be needed, first and foremost,” Jordan said. “You know, I never wanted to miss a game because it was an opportunity to prove. It was something that I felt like the fans are there that watch me play. I want to impress that guy way up on top who probably worked his ass off to get a ticket or to get money to buy the ticket.”

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It was ultimately Jordan’s maniacal competitiveness that made him want to play night after night, saying he wants to make the people up in the nosebleed seats shut up because they’re “probably calling me all kinds of names.” He adds, “You have a duty that if they’re wanting to see you, and as an entertainer, I want to show. Right?” Jordan explains that the first time in his career he remembers playing despite an injury was early on, when he hurt his ankle and, despite his vet telling him to rest, he went back into the game. Perhaps his most famous instance was Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz, commonly known as the “Flu Game.” “I was gonna find a way to be out there, even if I was a decoy,” he remembers of the game. “But once you get out there… the next thing you know, the emotions, the situation, the need of the team, all those things catapulted me to…” He ends the debate by simply breaking down the amount of free time professional athletes have in their day. “You play basketball two and a half to three hours a day, that’s your job, that’s what you get paid to do as an NBA player, he says before asking, “What are you doing the other 21 hours?” Load management has run rampant in the modern NBA, with Kawhi Leonard as the poster child, routinely playing about 50 games. The much younger Zion Williamson is also known to do it, but has admitted that Pelicans brass are against him playing back-to-backs. See social media’s reaction to players resting below.

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