Get a load of this

Basketball was my husband's #1 sport, so when Jim was still alive, I watched a lot of roundball. 

Not as much as Jim, of course. Once in a while, I'd walk in on him watching a game and realize the guys on the floor were wearing old school short shorts, not the long shorts currently worn. (Is there a name for these oxymoronic shorts other than 'long shorts'?) That was Jim, watching a game that had been played years before, where he likely knew the outcome, and enjoying it all the way. (Truly, I get it. Although I pick my spots, I can watch and enjoy a rerun of a baseball game. Just not the Bucky F-in' Dent game. Or the Bill Buckner ball between the legs game. Etc.)

Anyway, during the 1980's, one of the great NBA matchups was the Celtics Larry Bird vs. the Atlanta Hawks Dominique Wilkins. And the Hawks were coming to Boston right around Jim's January birthday.

So for Jim's birthday, we decided we'd see if we could get scalps for the game.

I had $300 in my pocket - the limit we'd decided on - and walked over to the Garden. Now $300 is still a lot of money, but back then it was A LOT of money. (I can't recall exactly what year it was, but today's equivalent of the $300 in my pocket is somewhere in the $800 range, plus or minus.)

Dealing with a scalper was actually fun. The scalper wanted the full $300 for two excellent seats on the floor, under one of the baskets. I bargained him down to $290, poor-mouthing that I needed the $10 to buy my husband a birthday hot dog and a beer. 

The game was ultra-exciting. The tickets were great - we were up close and personal with Dominique and Larry when they were at our end of the court. 

I have no idea who won, but it was a fun and exciting game, and watching these two future Hall of Famers go at it was worth the scalp price. 

How disappointing it would have been if either Wilkins or Bird had chosen to take the night off.

Back in the day, athletes didn't tend to take time off unless they were injured. So, if you went to a Milwaukee Bucks-Celtics game when Kareem Abdul Jabbar played for the Bucks, you were pretty much guaranteed seeing Jabbar. (Which I was fortunate enough to experience sometime in the mid-1970s, with a $3 obstructed-view ticket. Watching him play was worth the obstructed view, and back in the old Garden obstructed view meant that there was support girder that blocked you from folding down your seat.) During the Bill Russell era, if you went to a Celtics-Philly game, you were going to see Wilt Chamberlain. 

Now, you buy your ticket and you take your chances. 

The major issue in negotiations between the NBA’s players and owners over a new collective bargaining agreement is load management.

Owners are unhappy over the number of games missed by star players with no significant injuries. The designation “DNP-rest” was popularized by Spurs coach Gregg Popovich more than a decade ago and has become widespread. (Source: Boston Globe)

It's unlikely that the big stars would choose to sit out big games against big rivals. Would either Larry Bird or Dominique Wilkins taken a pass on going at it back in the day? NFW. 

I suspect that today's big guns are no different. 

Two days after the Lakers lost an overtime game to the Celtics in Boston in January, LeBron James and Anthony Davis were held out of the next game against the Nets. A night later, the two were fresh and ready for a game against the Knicks.

Now the Lakers aren't having a banner year. But the Celtics are. And Celtics vs. Lakers has historically been to basketball what Red Sox vs. Yankees is to baseball. So James and Davis weren't going to be on the sidelines. 

But tough luck to the Brooklyn Nets fans who wanted to see LeBron play before he hangs up his sneakers.  

There actually is reasonable reasoning behind players taking time off. 

Players logging 75-plus games has become a rarity because sports science shows that occasional rest is beneficial for those logging major minutes, especially players relied upon to help make deep playoff runs.

So, even though my first inclination is to think that superbly conditioned athletes making a kabillion dollars a year to play 82 games a year should be ready, willing, and able to play those 82 games (plus playoff games, of course) - and that opting to sit on the bench is a wuss move - I'll bow to the science and say, okay. These fellows need a break.

But load management has gone too far for some observers.

The NBA acknowledges that fans pay a lot of money for tickets and that sometimes they're stuck "paying to watch their favorite stars rock sweat suits on the bench." This is especially tough on fans who may only get to an occasional game in person, who may be taking a child who follows a particular player - and doesn't get to see that particular player play. Crushing, just crushing. 

The NBA also acknowledges that teams want to optimize "performance for the playoffs." If sitting the stars does that, so be it.

So the NBA looks at fixes like eliminating back-to-back (two days in a row) games; making the season longer; more days off during the All Star break for a mid-season vakay. 

From the players standpoint, they want to optimize their personal performance and the length of their career. If taking an occasional break improves their stats and extends their ability to make oodles of money for a few more years, well...

But the players themselves aren't uniform in wanting their loads managed. 

C.J. McCollum (New Orleans Pelicans) is the president of the Players Association. Here's what he has to say:

“An 82-game schedule is obviously difficult on the mind and the body,” he said. “But that is what we signed up for. That’s the way the game has always been, historically. The players that have come before us have obviously played under less-fortunate circumstances and situations and have been able to get through 82-game seasons. I’m not going to speak on behalf of the union in this sense, I enjoy playing 82 games because it’s a mental challenge, a physical challenge, when you get to the playoffs. You get to see the cream rise to the top and that’s the cool part of our journey. It’s about figuring out ways to take better care of your body, utilizing the resources that you have so that you can perform throughout the 82-game season.”

I find myself becoming a C.J. McCollum fan.  

I'm not in favor of players forging on with dangling limbs and brain-jarring injuries. And I recognize that mental health matters, too.

And yet, NBA players make a ton of money. The average salary is over $9M. This is, of course, skewed by the player who make $20M, $30M, $40M... But the median is still high: $4M+. And only 9 players (2 percent of the league) make the league minimum of $1M and change. 

And fans pay a lot of money to attend games. 

So I'm on the side of toughing it out. Or making sure that the superstars make play at least a few minutes during every game. (And, yes, I realize there are rhythms to a game, and rhythms to a player's game, that may not make this as easy as it seems.)

But I can't imagine how pissed Jim and I would have been if we'd gotten to the Garden and found that Larry or Dominique was sitting one out...