The Logo Jerry West Sounds Off On Load Management As a Clippers Advisor 👀 | July 9, 2023

Me personally, the tournament they're having in Vegas here, that's going to be a hell of a party for two weeks or something like that. How many days is it? I'll be here. I'll be here. I'm too damn old to be here. But anyway, I don't mind the end of the season thing, but that one to me, you know when the season used to end in professional basketball, what mid-May? Now the season runs into, we played the last, hockey was over before we played. And that's never happened before. But you have a completely different, in my opinion, you know we have players today, the new lay of the land is called load management. Now I'm going to ask your folks where your employee is. You're telling a guy, you know, we have to have a load management day off, okay. It's amazing. We once had a player here in the NBA that played more minutes than was scheduled in a season. Now how did that happen? He played overtimes and everything and was late great Wilt Chamberlain. He refused to come out of the game. I mean, there would have been a dog fight with him out there if he was going to come out of the game. But it's uniquely different the way the athletes are treated today. Players very rarely, very rarely play more than 35 to 37 minutes a game. I had four seasons in my career, I averaged over 40 a game. And I haven't checked you, but I'm sure you're right there with it. And it does take a toll. We played three nights in a row. My God, even if you're young, just shooting a layup it hurt. And so you really didn't get into the game until the first quarter. I'm sorry? Yeah, commercial flights. And by the way, I wish we had a longer, I have some couple of great funny stories, but it'd take a little while that on these in-flight things, we got these larger men, I won't say giant men, but they're larger men trying to sit in a tourist seat like this. And you get somebody right in front of you who's about three feet tall, and they make a bed. And here you are like this, and you want to just jam them back up in place. That was probably the greatest relief to get out of the tourist there was. But I mean, my God, I've seen remarkable changes. The league has done everything to protect the integrity of the game. If one thing that I would like to see change, forget all these extra games, I would basically not be for that, except the play-in games are fine. As Green mentioned, there's a reason why. But the NBA has done a great job of promoting this game, and obviously content is so important in them promoting the game all over the world. They're streaming. I say to myself, well, all the people that have participated, these sponsors who've been with the NBA forever, how are they going to react? So the business aspect of it, if you're involved, plays a whole different perspective. We are going to see, and I think maybe three years, an $100 million player playing a game of basketball, very much like soccer. Kareem, we damn sure played the wrong time. People ask me all the time, like, Richard, you see these contracts? Man, you wish. And I was like, hey, look, you've got to understand that in every generation it goes up in multiples. Just so you guys know, I've made more in career earnings than Michael Jordan. I'm not Michael Jordan. But I came at a generation, the generation right after, so it was like, the money kept going up in multiples. And so it was like, when people asked me, are you, you know, are you jealous that you play? I was like, man, I made more, like, Michael has a lot more money than me, people, just let's keep this in perspective. I'm just saying, no, it's just like, that's the beautiful thing, is that you get into this game and your goal is to progress the game, not only for yourself, but for the next generation and the following generation. That's the responsibility that the 440 that you talked about, that's the responsibility that all of us feel. And I'm going to say this, I'm not big on shortening the season. I'm not big on any of that. But yes, the load management, that's something I was blessed where I got to play with Jason Kidd. And he came in the 90s. In the mid 90s, not every single team had chartered flights. So Jason Kidd, you know, his first couple of years, he is commercial flights with the Dallas Mavericks. And I would just look at all of the amenities that the players have today. I'm going to take credit for one thing. What's that? Give it to me. The Lakers were the first team, when I was there, that flew private. No wonder y'all won so many championships. We decided to do it in a playoff. And now the NBA is actually in business, in business with a friend that I know. And always the teams fly the same plane. A few, two or three of them, I think, have their own planes. But it's a real boon for it, particularly on the West Coast. If you play in, say, Seattle, let's say Portland. After the game, you can be home after a game at two o'clock and you're never ready to go to sleep. How long did it take you to go to sleep after a game? A couple of hours. Yeah, several hours. And so these guys can sleep on a plane, go home and sleep in their own bed instead of and play a game the next day, that day, instead of flying that day and getting home and going playing a game. So it does, I think, protect the home court advantage a little bit more. And so I'm all for that. But the players today have been uniquely taken care of. And as I say, I want to be part of that load management. I'm sure you people will vote for it.