New load management rules could have cost Warriors millions last year

It will have a major impact in the Bay Area, where the Warriors added Chris Paul to an already veteran-laden roster this offseason. Four games would have likely triggered fines last year, a review of the 2022-23 Warriors schedule found. Four fines under the new rules would result in $3.85 million in penalties, with each fine after the second violation increasing by $1 million. At least three other games seemingly would have triggered an automatic investigation from the league office.

Under the new rules, Steph Curry, Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green qualify as “star” players because they’ve made All-Star or All-NBA teams in the past three seasons. Paul will qualify as well; Klay Thompson will not.

The new rules reportedly state that teams can rest only one healthy “star” player at once and can’t rest any in nationally televised or in-season tournament games. Load management games need to be split between home and away games, “with a preference” for home games, and load-managed players have to be “present and visible to fans.”

As ESPN’s Bobby Marks notes, “The resting policy pertains to players who are healthy.” If some legitimate long-term injury happens to a star player, the league won’t require them to Willis Reed their way into a late-spring midweek matchup if another star needs legal rest. Violations will ultimately be determined by league office investigations, according to ESPN.

If teams do break the rules, they’ll be fined $100,000 the first time and $250,000 the second, and then the penalties get steep, with a million bucks getting tacked on for every subsequent violation. If the Warriors illegally load-manage their stars four times, that would be $100,000 for the first instance, $250,000 for the second, $1.25 million for the third and $2.25 million for the fourth.

Curry, Paul and Green are all well into their 30s, with a history of injuries and multiple seasons of deep playoff runs under their belts.

“We have to wait to see what the guidelines are once they are approved by the vote, but that would have a big effect on our load management,” Dunleavy said. (The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)

Golden State does have a bit of leeway here. Both Curry and Paul are 35 or older, which means that under the new rules, the Dubs can get advance approval from the league office to rest them during back-to-backs. The new rules reportedly also let teams petition the league office a week in advance if they want an exception to sit a younger star, like Green or Wiggins, in a back-to-back. Reasons for an exception include “prior or unusual injury history.”

However, teams still don’t have full discretion on when those older stars can rest during a back-to-back. If one of those games is nationally televised, or part of the in-season tournament, Paul and Curry couldn’t take their rest day then. The exception to that exception is if both games of the back-to-back are nationally televised or part of the in-season tournament; in that case, they could rest during one of those games.

Under the new guidelines, the team would have certainly been investigated and likely fined for four games last season: Nov. 4 at New Orleans, Nov. 21 at New Orleans, Dec. 7 at Utah, and Jan. 20 at Cleveland. These games featured all three stars either being explicitly load-managed or getting rest for an “injury” that lasted a single game. 

The Dubs would have also been investigated for three games due to the new rule that if a star player misses a nationally televised game, a review is automatically triggered: Dec. 16 at Philadelphia, Jan. 25 versus Memphis and Feb. 26 versus Minnesota. We’re assuming the Dubs would not have been fined because Green missed the first game because of a right knee contusion — which is much more severe than the injuries typically concocted for single-game rests — and missed the third game due to a flare-up from that injury. Wiggins, who missed the second game because of a non-COVID illness, was described as “raspy and far from full strength when speaking with the media,” ahead of that matchup. 

It’s worth noting that fines in the single-digit millions are still a pittance to Warriors owner Joe Lacob. The team pulls in more than a half-billion in revenue annually and is worth billions; he spent hundreds of millions on the roster and luxury tax last year. But he didn’t get rich in the first place by donating millions of dollars back to the league office.