Utah Jazz News

Home

Quizzes

Watch

Newsletter

Feb 17, 2023; Salt Lake City, UT, USA; John Stockton in attendance in the 2023 NBA All Star Rising Stars Game at Vivint Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kyle Terada-Imagn Images Kyle Terada-Imagn Images

Utah Jazz Legend John Stockton Rips Load Management, Modern NBA

Originally posted on Utah Jazz on SI | By Jared Koch | Last updated Aug 16, 2025 9:56 AM ET

One of the more highly-contested talking points engulfing the NBA in recent years has been that of the discussion of load management; stars taking time off to recover and miss games with the intention of keeping their bodies healthier for longer.

The load management trend that's surfaced across nearly every NBA roster in recent years, with more teams taking precautionary measures on their best players to keep them right for the long-term, making a full 82-game slate for some of the top names in the league being more of a rarity than 10-20 years ago.

It's a conversation that's seen much debate in the past few years, with seemingly more and more of the league following suit in the recent trend. But, in the mind of one of the league's greatest iron men to touch the floor, Utah Jazz legend John Stockton, he's far from the biggest fan of the entire concept.

"I looked at it as a privilege and an honor to get to play in every game," Stockton said on The Ultimate Assist. "Why do this if you're not going to lay it all out there? I remember almost crying when I had to hear the national anthem in the first game that I missed, and it felt the same way for the other ones. As for those guys, they're being told by experts, this, that, and the other thing. I think it's bad for the game. I think it's bad for them individually. The worst part about it is that it's bad for the game, and it isn't bearing out to where they're more healthy, either."

"I think an athlete, you train yourself for the most extreme situations, which is 48 minutes, four games in five nights. You train yourself for that, and anything less is doing yourself a disservice. I think it's a disservice from personal level, all the way to the organizational and fan level. It's awful."

There might not be a bigger polar opposite player to the load management era than Stockton, who finds himself sixth all-time among NBA games played, suiting up for an entire 82-game season for a staggering 16 seasons, and cementing his status as the greatest passer and one of the greatest names in Jazz history in the process.

Load management wasn't isn't in Stockton's DNA, but fast forward 20-plus years, and the NBA is in an entirely different landscape. The league has more insightful research and data to bank on, teams have a much more elevated and stronger medical staff than we saw in the '90s, and both teams and players want to be sustainably better for longer.

That, in turn, has led to an increasing number of players taking more rest, followed by the recent surge in load management. The league has since started to crack down on the trend in terms of their games played minimum for awards, and for teams taking and resting stars, like the Jazz and Lauri Markkanen did last year, they've dished out some heavy fines if that player's rest gets out of control.

Still, it's far from a perfect fix, and truly, there might not be one on the matter for some time. But nonetheless, it does allow you to take a step back to appreciate anomalies like Stockton and other machines that took the floor in years past that didn't have the modern luxuries of today's game.