Charles Barkley: “I’m never going to agree on ‘Load Management’. It always worked when the greatest players who ever played the game played as much as possible, and they had bad shoes and didn’t have the best doctors in the world like they do today. They also don’t fly commercial like we did. In my first two years in the NBA I’d be in coach with some old lady laying on my damn shoulder for three hours, and then have to guard Hakeem Olajuwon or Karl Malone. I didn’t fly first class until my third year in the league. The thing that bothers people is when guys are resting healthy. Guys are making 30 and 40 million dollars a year. If Doctor J, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Kareem, Bill Russell and those guys could play every night in crappy shoes, fly commercial, and make $100,000 a year, a guy making $40-$50 million a year don’t need ‘Load Management’. These guys don’t have any loyalty to a team or a city and it’s why ratings are down.” (Full Segment Above)
Listen to award-winning 'Inside the NBA' analyst Charles Barkley explain to Chris Broussard and Rob Parker why he thinks the modern NBA star has no right to practice the infamously dubbed ‘Load Management’, in an era where modern medicine, revolutionary training regimens, and state of the art shoes and equipment have made this era the best time to ever play professional sports.
Barkley brings up the fact that NBA stars of yesteryear literally flew commercial and sat in coach, while wearing the cheapest and most rudimentary basketball shoes you can imagine… While also operating in a completely different era of health advising when it came to innovative medical staffs.
All while making an incredibly less amount of money that they make today, where even a scrub can net in $5 million -$10 million a season.
Check out the full segment above.