For the Better of the NBA, We Must Root Against Kawhi and the Clippers
Just a season ago, Kawhi Leonard was the savior of the NBA. He dethroned the Golden State Warriors and ended their dynasty. He brought the Toronto Raptors their first NBA Championship in franchise history. Shortly after, Kevin Durant left the Warriors to go play for the Brooklyn Nets. Then the rumor was that Kawhi wanted to play in his home state of California. Everyone was terrified he would create a super team with LeBron James and Anthony Davis with the Los Angeles Lakers. Instead, Kawhi chooses the LA Clippers.
Everything was balanced.
Fast forward to current day — fans should be rooting for anybody but the Clippers to win it all. Why? Because if they do, they prove that Toronto’s tactics of “load management” work if you want to win an NBA Championship.
It made sense for the Raptors to rest Kawhi Leonard as much as possible last season. Raptors GM, Masai Ujiri, knew he was taking a massive risk when trading for Kawhi and knew that there was a good chance that it would be just a one-year rental. With that information, it made sense that GM Masai Ujiri and head coach Nick Nurse would never let Kawhi Leonard play back-to-back games. They were all in on the incredible gamble of trading for a player who barely played the season prior and was in the final year of his contract.
With the Clippers, Kawhi is signed for three years. There is no gamble on what they are doing. They won’t lose Kawhi after one season the way the Raptors did. And yet they still refuse to play Kawhi on back-to-backs. Kawhi sat out last night again in Oklahoma City and the Clippers lost to the Thunder 118–112.
LeBron James recently came out and said he would always play if he’s healthy since he doesn’t know how long he’ll be playing for and there could be kids coming out to see him play and could miss him if he chose to sit out. Doc Rivers, the coach of the LA Clippers, decided to defend his tactics to Mark Medina of USA Today and claimed that load management was part of “their philosophy.” Rivers also said that the philosophy of the LA Lakers was probably whatever LeBron James says it is.
If the Clippers end up winning the NBA Championship, the NBA will be changed forever. Unless of course NBA Commissioner Adam Silver can come up with a way to stop load management. The Clippers winning will prove to the world and the rest of the NBA that load management works and it is the key to winning an NBA Championship.
The NBA at that point would become nearly unwatchable. Many already believe that the regular season is meaningless, especially with all the “load management” going on throughout the league. Ratings keep going down for the NBA. Part of it is because LeBron went out west and most people are in the east, but the other big factor is we constantly have big stars sit out just to rest on nationally televised games.
Kawhi Leonard is 28 years old, there is truly no reason he should be resting this much. Unless his knee is truly that bad and never heals. From all the reports, it seems to be true that they just want as little of milage on Kawhi by the time the playoffs start. According to ESPN, Kawhi has not played both ends of a back-to-back since April 2017.
If that strategy works again for the team who has Kawhi Leonard, we will see a huge shift in the NBA next season. Many can assume it was just a fluke last year. The Warriors were all injured, the other teams in the east weren’t ready to step up, etc. But to happen again and get through the west would prove that this formula works. Then next year, we would see the Bucks constantly resting Giannis Antetokounmpo. Or the Rockets constantly resting James Harden. It would be the smart thing to do for the organization, but the fans would get cheated. Both fans who go to the games, and for the ones who sit at home and watch.
Just for the sake of the NBA and its future, we cannot have the Clippers winning the NBA Championship.
