MIAMI _ To Erik Spoelstra, the notion was preposterous.
With the Miami Heat coming off an overtime victory last Saturday against the Milwaukee Bucks and set to complete the back-to-back set of road games the following night against the Minnesota Timberwolves, he was asked about possible rotation alterations.
"We're not doing load management," he said. "We're the Miami Heat."
It is, of course, farcical to think in such terms three games in.
But five games in?
That apparently is a different story, with the Los Angeles Clippers holding Kawhi Leonard out of their nationally televised game against the Utah Jazz one week into the season. Three games later, Leonard was held out of this past Wednesday's nationally televised game against the Milwaukee Bucks.
The initial candor was the load-management program that proved so effective during last season's championship run with the Toronto Raptors, when Leonard was limited to 60 regular-season games. Eventually, though, ongoing knee maintenance was cited.
Also emphasized was that Leonard is not prepared to participate in both ends of back-to-back sets, something he has not done since April 2017 (neither of the Clippers' two games against the Heat this season is part of a back-to-back).
"Kawhi Leonard is not a healthy player under the league's resting policy, and, as such, is listed as managing a knee injury in the LA Clippers injury report," read a statement from NBA spokesman Mike Bass in the wake of Leonard's latest absence. "The league office, in consultation with the NBA's director of sports medicine, is comfortable with the team medical staff's determination that Leonard is not sufficiently healthy to play in back-to-back games at this time."
In a world of everyone-has-tendinitis, couldn't any player or any team make such a claim?
As Clippers coach Doc Rivers said, "He feels great, but he feels great because of what we've been doing. We've just got to continue to do it."
Such candor cost the Clippers a $50,000 NBA fine.
But this is where it gets hazy, as the NBA continues to offer an 82-game schedule that has proven taxing on bodies beyond Leonard's, even with the dramatic reduction in back-to-back games in recent years.
For example, what if it comes to this: What if a prime free agent, already offered maximum riches under the salary cap, stipulates he expects to be granted 20 nights off per season, with, of course, full pay?
Would the Clippers (or Raptors) have balked at such a proposal from Leonard amid their free-agency desperation in July?
For that matter, if Giannis Antetokounmpo were to make such a stipulation (just spit-balling here) in 2021 free agency, would a single suitor step away from the table?
At a point where NBA salaries will exceed $40 million per season, making the per-game payoff in excess of $500,000 (while also appreciating players are not actually paid by the game), where is the line drawn?
Keep in mind, the Brooklyn Nets are paying Kevin Durant $38.2 million this season with the full expectation he will not play a single minute following his Achilles surgery. Similarly, the Golden State Warriors this summer guaranteed Klay Thompson $32.7 million for this season with no assurances he makes it back to the court from his playoff knee injury.
On Broadway, if a leading man/woman is out, there typically is a refund or exchange offered when an understudy has to step in.
In the NBA, the Leonard situation has muddled all expectations.
The NBA thought it had gotten ahead of this curve when it fined the San Antonio Spurs $250,000 for coach Gregg Popovich holding four key players out of a November 2012 game against the Heat at AmericanAirlines Arena.
Load management is good business when in the business of championships.
But the NBA, with so many of its recent adjustments, has made it just as clear that it primarily is in the business of entertainment.
For the past two Wednesdays, ESPN's Clippers offering has been less entertaining because of a night off for a leading man.
When Popovich prioritized winning above all, there mostly was a shrug toward the eccentricity of allocating of random nights off.
Now it has become NBA strategy.
If unchecked, it could become policy _ with players making their own schedules, the 82-game agenda merely a carving station.
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