LA Clippers
The LA Clippers are probably one of the main teams that have utilized (or taken advantage) of load management over the last few seasons. Managing Kawhi Leonard has been a big part of that. In his defense, Leonard has battled his fair of injury issues over the course of his career. There’s an argument to be made that load management has helped with some of those injury problems. At the same time, being somewhat the face of load management hasn’t helped the perception of him around the league.
And maybe he doesn’t care about that. This new rule is absolutely going to impact the way the Clippers use both Leonard and Paul George, who has also battled some injury concerns in recent years, during the regular season.
With both Leonard and PG healthy to enter the season, it’ll be interesting to see how LA’ ends up utilizing them. At least due to load management, because of this new rule, the Clippers will have to adjust their previous blueprint in resting/playing their two stars.
The big question is, how big of a strategic impact will it have on the team overall? If it does have that big of an impact on one team, it’s probably going to be the Clippers.