SAN DIEGO — Load Management isn't for athletes. It's an advertising slogan for a diaper company.
Pampers for the pampered.
And yet it now is cast in the soft stone of our sporting lexicon. Load Management is about our playing-for-dollars babies.
What LM amounts to is millionaires taking a healthy break from work. With full pay.
It all began in the NBA, when these all-powerful athletes who rule the league decided it would be good to lessen the load and save themselves for the postseason, which now seems to be a period in which it is easier for them to get injured.
They now blame the shorter offseason, but it didn't keep them from grabbing their paychecks. Or being out of shape.
Without it being openly called Load Management in baseball, it has happened — even here, thanks to spa manager Jayce Tingler — in a team sport in which players move less than in any other. They are bone China.
Are starting pitchers LMed? They get through five innings and trainers send out stretchers. And yet, despite the incredible advancement in sports medicine and training, Tommy John's name is paged all too frequently.
I'm hearing that, with a 17-game schedule, LM will become routine in the NFL. It can't. For the simple reason that there are not enough games and roster depth to rest the best players and hope to win a game. Certainly not by teams in contention or hoping to be playing in January.
Of course, clubs who have clinched certain postseason positions long have been sitting their important players late in the season.
But each game up to the season's final weeks is too important for it to happen.
This came to be recently, and it has gained acceptance, especially in the NBA (I believe Kawhi Leonard was the founder). No player this season averaged more than 38 minutes a game.
And what good does it do? These NBA playoffs have been riddled with injuries to terribly important players.
So the Lakers fire their trainer?
History tells us teams enjoying the best health generally win championships. But regular seasons can't be eliminated.
Rest isn't helping many remain among the active. The NBA has picked up a piano as it struggles to the finish line.
I despise Load Management. And what I dislike most is how it affects the fans.
Potential customers — especially those who live in towns featuring bad teams — look at schedules and mark the games they want to attend.
And then the stars take in a movie. You don't get your money back.
When I covered the pushover Clippers here in 1981-82, the only sellouts at the Sports Arena were when the Lakers and Celtics came in. The stars — and there were many — played.
And basketball isn't close to being as physical now as it was then.
OK, Bette Midler needed an understudy for "Rochelle, Rochelle," and manicurists were upset. But she was injured.
If you're not hurt, play. Can't believe I never called in sick with sore fingers.
