Load management.
It’s a term that makes any basketball fan south of Millennial cringe. Boo hoo, Boomer, it’s a real thing – deal with it.
Besides, load management has been employed – embraced, disputed, endured, acknowledged – for quite some time now. NBA coaches have all but accepted the concept: In order to get to the finish line intact, it’s best to give the modern athlete a few nights off here and there. Like it or not, the NBA’s schedule, loaded with back-to-backs, late night flights and “schedule losses” practically begs coaches to sit the game’s biggest stars at times.
Who can argue with a Hall-of-Fame coach who won five NBA titles and three “Coach of the Year” honors?
“(Gregg Popovich) was coaching a team that was making deep playoff runs, almost every year,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr once said of Poppovich, the godfather of load management. “And he recognized the toll on these guys as the game was speeding up. So, I think Pop definitely kind of popularized the idea of the rest and the benefits.”
And if memory serves – and it often does not for this Gen-Xer – Pop “pop”ularized the concept primarily when his Spurs team had a decent chance of losing anyway. When the Spurs played a top challenger on the road, likely on the second leg of a back-to-back, Pop would take the L on the way out – smiling because an aging Tim Duncan, Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili were able to rest their weary bones along the way.
Though he’s just a pup, the 44-year-old head coach of the Denver Nuggets might know how to manage the load as well as Pop. Only David Adelman does it a bit differently.
From observation of a very small sample size, it appears that Adelman identifies games the Nuggets should win, and exercises load management then.
Popovich – and former Nuggets coach Michael Malone, to some extent – would sit guys on games that would have been tough to win no matter what; Adelman puts winning gimmees in the hands of guys who aren’t getting a ton of minutes. The rest benefits, in theory, should be the same; it’s just a twist on an old concept.
Adelman’s track record is admittedly short. He was thrust into an interim role just moments before the postseason last spring, and after earning the full-time gig, he’s only coached a total of 14 games in the new season. Still, the early returns suggest that the young coach knows a thing or two about clock management.
Take last night’s game against the Pelicans for example. Aaron Gordon – an NBA All-Star in the making this season, a vital piece to the Nuggets puzzle, a guy (if healthy) might have helped to take down OKC during last season’s playoffs – was a scratch in New Orleans. Yes, Gordon was listed as questionable for “bilateral hamstring injury management,” but let’s not kid ourselves; the oh-so-tough Gordon would have been playing if the stakes were high.
Wisely, Adelman realized the Nuggets and their newfound depth have more than enough to beat the lowly Pelicans – even without Gordon. We saw this earlier in the year, too, when Adelman sat both Gordon and the historically banged-up Jamal Murray against the depleted Pacers. In both games, stars got rest and the Nuggets got a win. There were no concessions, no waiving the white flag as soon as the team stepped off the bus. No; Adelman believes in his backups, asks them to go get wins and has been rewarded in doing so.
Not only has Adelman rested his most critical assets, he’s taken these same opportunities to develop his young hopefuls in meaningful situations. Essentially, he’s asking his youngest talent to go win a game without the help of the Nuggets entire arsenal. Capable or not, those Nuggets are playing meaningful minutes rather than just garbage time.
It’s not just about load management though; Adelman appears to be honing in on the management of minutes for his key players.
Nikola Jokic? Last season he averaged 36.7 minutes per game; this season, he’s clocking in at 35.6. Whether it’s luck or coincidence, the three-time MVP slowly puts together statistics worthy of a fourth. With a capable backup behind Jokic in Jonas Valančiūnas, Ademlan is finding ways to sit his MVP. Similar to the way the coach handles load management, Jokic’s minutes log tell a story. In fact, three out of four games in which the big man has played the most minutes, have all been losses – against Golden State (in an overtime opener), Portland (a head scratcher) and against Chicago on Monday night. Point being, when the the game is in hand, or when the opponent allows for rest, Adelman is taking advantage – something that hasn’t always been the case in Denver. Granted, Adelman has the luxury of a backup big – whereas Malone did not – but how the new coach is handling Jokic’s minutes is clever.
Jamal Murray? His minutes are down from 36.1 to 34.3 and he’s playing a lot, but not as much as last season. He sat out in a winnable game, too.
Gordon? He’s playing a whopping six minutes less and has missed two games already.
All of them look better.
And so do Adelman’s bench players because of it. Even Adelman’s “10-13” players have all logged real minutes: Spencer Jones-8.8; Julian Strawther-7.9; Jalen Pickett-7.6; Zeke Nnaji-6.9. Those numbers don’t exactly tell the whole story. To be fair, they all don’t play every game. But when they do, their contributions are often significant rather than “just” end of game blowout minutes. Last night’s game provided one such example with Nnaji specifically. Before the Pelicans game, Nnaji had logged “mostly” garbage time minutes, averaging just under 3.5 minutes in the six games he’d played. Last night, with Gordon out, Adelman opted to give Nnaji the chance to make a real difference and play when he was truly needed; ultimately, Nnaji played 26:36 meaningful minutes in a game the Nuggets won. He wasn’t great, but he didn’t have to be to beat the Pelicans. Meanwhile, Gordon got solid rest.
It’s still early. Injuries and long road trips still await the Nuggets (and every team, for that matter). Adelman will be tested plenty of times throughout the season.
But for now, it looks like the first-year coach is beginning to master the art of minutes, a skill that will matter greatly in April and beyond.