NEW YORK -- Kristaps Porzingis is intimately familiar with the winding hallways of Madison Square Garden. For the nearly four years he played for the New York Knicks, Porzingis would saunter up the ramp from the loading dock, walk down one dimly lit hallway and turn right into the Knicks locker room. Thursday will be the first time Porzingis will turn left and enter the sparsely decorated visitor's locker room.

Porzingis has already faced his former team once this season, but Thursday will be the first time he has played his former team in his former home arena since the trade that sent Porzingis to the Dallas Mavericks. If Twitter is any indication of how fans will receive him, Porzingis said he expects to be booed.

"Social media is mostly negative," Porzingis said after the team's practice on Wednesday. "We will see. It is going to be a lot of emotion that is for sure. I am excited to play. Playing at the Garden is always fun. It is going to be weird at the same time."

The Knicks drafted Porzingis in 2015 and fans booed him during the selection. Then, Porzingis became the face of the Knicks' franchise. Years of losing took its toll on the young All Star. Porzingis infamously skipped his exit meeting with former team president Phil Jackson and expressed discontent with the franchise's direction. President Steve Mills and general manager Scott Perry traded Porzingis to the Mavericks ahead of the 2019 trade deadline.

Leaning up against the wall of the NBPA's gym -- the same gym where Porzingis once spent time rehabbing from a torn ACL -- Porzingis said he was uninterested in revisiting the contentious circumstances that led to his move to the Mavericks.

"It is in the past now," Porzingis said. "It happened. I am in a new place."

The Knicks, however, are in a familiar position. They have a sputtered to a 2-9 record and have been blown out by the Cavaliers and the Bulls -- both teams at the bottom of the Eastern Conference. After their poor performance against Cleveland, which caused fans to violently boo the Knicks off their home court, Mills and Perry addressed reporters and voiced their discontent with how the team has been playing. Porzingis has seen all of that unfold from afar.

"When I was there, the expectation was always high for us," Porzingis said. "It is a city that is hungry for success in basketball. And for them, for the fans, for the city to be going through this year after year, it has got to be tough. When things are not going right, there needs to be changes and this year is no different for them again."

Having already faced the Knicks in early November helped with Porzingis' nerves, he said. Before that game, which the Mavericks lost 106-102, coach Rick Carlisle told Porzingis, "lose yourself in the team and don't get distracted by who we are playing." Carlisle said he plans to reiterate that advice.

"He did that in the first game and he had a very good all-around game. We just didn't win," Carlisle said. "My advice this time is really the same. We got to make this about our team being in New York and competing to try to win a game, not about these other kinds of distractions."

Watch the best shots as Rafael Nadal keeps his hopes of winning his first ATP Finals title alive after beating Daniil Medvedev.

READ MORE: Rafael Nadal saves match point before beating Daniil Medvedev to boost ATP Finals hopes

Available to UK users only

Eintracht Frankfurt captain David Abraham has been banned for seven weeks for knocking over Freiburg coach Christian Streich during a Bundesliga game.

Freiburg were leading 1-0 when the ball went out of play in stoppage time. Streich let the ball go by as Abraham tried to recover it, and the Frankfurt captain body-checked the coach with his shoulder as he ran past. Upset Freiberg players and staff then chased the defender onto the field.

- ESPN+ gets Bundesliga rights starting in 2020

The ban means Abraham will not be available for selection until Frankfurt return from winter break against Hoffenheim on Jan. 18. He will be banned until Dec. 29 -- a span of six matches. He was also fined €25,000.

The sanctions also come in addition to a reported club fine of €35,000.

Freiburg player Vincenzo Grifo was banned for three games after the video assistant referee system spotted him targeting Abraham for retaliation in the melee.

Both clubs said they would appeal against the bans handed down by the DFB's sports court.

"Eintracht Frankfurt and the player will file an appeal against this ruling in order to give David Abraham the ability to express himself in person before the DFB sports court about what happened in Freiburg," Frankfurt said.

Abraham has played in Germany since 2013 and for Frankfurt since 2015. He's also played six times for Argentina. Grifo was born in Germany but has made two appearances for Italy.

Freiburg are fourth in the league after winning Sunday's game 1-0, while Frankfurt are ninth.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

When Joe Scally was 14, his youth coaches at New York City FC moved him from central midfielder to right-back. On the field, the distance amounted to about 25 yards, give or take. Two years on, it's set to translate into a journey of thousands of miles, and for NYCFC, it could well turn into a quantum leap.

Scally, now 16, has been transferred to German side and Bundesliga leaders Borussia Monchengladbach. Sources tell ESPN that the initial fee is around $2 million, with add-ons in the form of "very achievable appearance bonuses" that could take the final fee to as high as $7 million. There is a sell-on fee as well, although that will decrease as Scally gets more minutes on the field. Because Scally doesn't have a European passport, he will remain with NYCFC through next season and then join Gladbach midway through the 2020-21 European campaign after he turns 18 (his birthday is Dec. 31).

Scally is described by those who have followed his time with NYCFC as very athletic with the kind of mobility that allows him to get up and down the flank. While his defending needs work, his ability to contribute in attack is what sets him apart. His forward skills were evident at the recent FIFA U-17 World Cup, when his cross set up Gianluca Busio for a goal against Senegal.

"[Scally] is a very modern outside back who can cover the whole outside [flank]," said NYCFC sporting director Claudio Reyna. "He's a right-back who creates and has a lot of assists."

The deal amounts to a first of sorts in MLS, as it was completed before Scally had played any first-team minutes in league play for NYCFC (he did appear in a U.S. Open Cup match earlier this year). It's similar to Chris Richards' move from FC Dallas to Bayern Munich in 2018, although in Richards' case, he was initially loaned out before securing a permanent move earlier this year.

So why move Scally now instead of waiting to see if he can prove himself in NYCFC's first team? It's a simple case of everything being in alignment.

"There comes a point where there's a deal on the table that's just too good to pass up," Reyna said. "[Gladbach] stepped up, made an offer. It's just a great deal for us. Sometimes you're not quite sure if you're selling at that right value. We look at data from around the world for similar transfers, and so we want to make sure that we're in the same ballpark and that we're not asking for a ridiculous transfer fee. There is also a point where their value starts dropping, and you have to be aware of that. So you have to kind of strike while it's hot, and that's what happened with Joe. It just made so much sense."

For Scally, it's the realization of his dream to sign with a team in one of the top five leagues in Europe, although the pathway was a bit fuzzy when he first made the positional switch to right-back. Scally was playing with NYCFC's U15 team at the time, and nominal right-back Nico Benalcazar -- now a freshman at Wake Forest -- was away on international duty. Then-NYCFC youth coach Rodrigo Marion had been impressed with Scally's size, speed and passing, so he played Scally at right-back, and he performed well enough to make the move permanent, even though there was some resistance.

"At first I was like, 'No way would I want to do this,' because I've always liked scoring and assisting on goals and everything," Scally said. "Then I realized it could be the best position for me, and this could bring me to another level if I kept progressing at this position."

NYCFC soon moved Scally to play with the club's U19 team, helping it win back-to-back U.S. Development Academy titles; those performances enabled him to sign a homegrown contract. Gladbach took notice as well, especially as Scally began playing for U.S youth national teams.

"We were surprised," said NYCFC technical director David Lee about Gladbach's interest. "We all knew how good Joe is and why we signed him so early on in his career. But I definitely don't think we were expecting any team to come in and buy him at this point in his development, purely because it isn't particularly normal in MLS and the U.S. for that to happen."

Initially, Scally's lack of a European passport meant negotiations were moved to the back burner, but they reignited about eight months ago and eventually resulted in a deal. "Their interest kept growing and growing," Scally said. "It became like, 'Wow, this could be an opportunity for me to go to Europe.' As I got older, and now I'm 16, we went over there and saw everything. It made me realize that this is the place that I want to play at."

It's a massive step for Scally -- although he will have the benefit of another season with NYCFC -- and his family as well. That said, it's similar to the kind of separation that takes place for a lot of parents with children in their late teenage years. "My mom says she's going to miss me every day," Scally said. "My dad, of course, he's always just telling me that it's a great opportunity and I'm going to love it there. They treat it as if I'm going away to college."

- Stream MLS games LIVE on ESPN+
- ESPN fantasy soccer: Sign up now!

Overall, Scally's move amounts to another success for NYCFC's academy. While MLS teams like FC Dallas, Real Salt Lake, the Philadelphia Union and the New York Red Bulls remain at the top of the heap in terms of players produced, it's worth noting that NYCFC's academy has only been around since 2014. And now there are a variety of stories to tell.

Defender James Sands, 19, made 19 league appearances this season. Eighteen-year-old midfielder Justin Haak has gotten a taste of first-team action with six league and cup appearances, as well as leading the U19 team. Now Scally is making the move overseas. It's one thing to say there's a path from the academy to the first team. It's another to offer up actual proof.

"We obviously don't have a traditional pipeline in MLS," said NYCFC academy director Sam Pugsley. "We don't have a second team, but what we've been able to build here is something we believe in, in a very short period of time, to be successful. And I think anytime you can put it in a PowerPoint or a piece of paper and show tangible evidence of that pipeline coming to fruition, it helps the sell to players and parents."

Scally's story is one that Reyna wishes more of his MLS colleagues would replicate. It's only in recent years that MLS has begun to engage more in the international transfer market as both a buyer and a seller. But actual transfers for academy products, as opposed to players leaving for free, is a new phenomenon, and a move like Scally's is one that Reyna believes "brings a lot of credibility to our league." It will increase European scouting of American players, and as there are more success stories, the value of youth players will go up.

Reyna sounded almost exasperated as to why there isn't a greater willingness on the part of MLS clubs to sell youth players like Scally, assuming the desires of the selling club, the buying club and the player all align.

"There's sometimes some sensitivity to [selling young players] here, and I don't understand why," he said. "If you go to Holland or Germany or Portugal or Italy, for that matter, if you're not the biggest club in that country, you're very open to telling a player that at some point, if they're doing well, they'll move on to perhaps a bigger club and a bigger stage. Countries and leagues that have been around much longer than us have been doing this. I don't really know why we wouldn't act in the same way."

Every club is different, but as academies in MLS and beyond become more mature, it seems only a matter of time until their players are involved in deals like Scally's.

For Scally and NYCFC, that time is now.

Match abandoned Tshwane Spartans 33 for 4 (de Villiers 10*, van Biljon 3*, Morris 2-8) v Nelson Mandela Bay Giants

Tshwane Spartans were in a precarious position against Nelson Mandela Bay Giants before a floodlight failure, lightning and then rain forced the game to be called off.

The Spartans were 33 for 4 in 7.1 overs when the floodlights malfunctioned at 6.10pm local time. While the players were waiting for power to be restored, a lightning threat forced them indoors. The floodlights were back on in about 40 minutes but then rain made an appearance and the match was eventually called off at 7.35pm.

The Spartans' first game, against Durban Heat, was abandoned without a ball being bowled. The Giants are at the top of the table for now with six points from two games.

The Spartans didn't have a great start after being put in as Chris Morris dismissed Theunis de Bruyn and Dean Elgar in the third over. de Bruyn top-edged a flick in front of square leg, while Elgar failed to put bat to a full toss and was trapped lbw for a first-ball duck.

Vaughn van Jaarsveld fell in the next over when Junior Dala hit the stumps direct at the non-striker's end with the batsman a bit slow to get back in. Dala dented the Spartans further with captain Heinrich Klaasen's wicket to leave them reeling at 28 for 4 in the sixth over.

AB de Villiers tried to rescue them and was batting on 10 along with Pite van Biljon before the external factors had their say.

FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Despite a 2-7 record, New York Jets CEO Christopher Johnson said Wednesday that he will not make a coaching change, indicating the embattled Adam Gase will return in 2020.

Johnson, in his first public remarks since June, said he informed the team last Wednesday that Gase isn't going anywhere.

Johnson said the poor season is "exceedingly frustrating," but he commended Gase, in his first season, for keeping the team unified and fighting through a rash of injuries.

Speaking at practice, Johnson expressed confidence in Gase and new general manager Joe Douglas, who was hired in June.

Fan unrest peaked in the aftermath of an ugly loss to the previous winless Miami Dolphins on Nov. 3. The Jets beat the New York Giants last Sunday.

Ohio State star defensive lineman Chase Young will miss one more game for an NCAA rules violation before returning next week against Penn State, the Buckeyes announced Wednesday.

Young sat out last week's game against Maryland and will miss Saturday's game at Rutgers. He admitted last week that he accepted a loan last year from someone he described as a "family friend" but repaid it in full.

Although Young repaid the loan, it is still considered an extra benefit from the NCAA because Young didn't meet the friend until after his recruitment to Ohio State had started.

"I want to thank and express my sincere gratitude to university staff members who worked so diligently and expertly to learn and understand the facts, and then to report these facts to the NCAA as part of our request to have Chase reinstated," Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said in a prepared statement. "This is the example of the culture of compliance we have at Ohio State. I also want to commend Chase Young and let him know how proud we are of him. He took responsibility for his actions, cooperated throughout the process and understood and accepted that there would be consequences."

Young reacted to the decision on Twitter, writing that he's "blessed to be a part of this team, this university, and this community."

Excited to be back on the field next week! Thank you Buckeye Nation for all the love and support. I'm blessed to be a part of this team, this university, and this community. Lots of love to my family. God Bless and Go Bucks!

— CY2 (@youngchase907) November 13, 2019

Ohio State had made a request for immediate reinstatement with the NCAA, including asking for a decision to be expedited. The NCAA completed its review of Young's case Wednesday.

Young reportedly accepted the loan to help pay for his girlfriend to fly to watch Ohio State play in the Rose Bowl last year. The identity of the family friend has not been revealed.

Ohio State learned of the potential violation after Young's standout performance against Wisconsin on Oct. 26.

Young has 13.5 sacks this season -- just one-half sack shy of Ohio State's single-season record. He had 4 sacks, 5 tackles for loss and 2 forced fumbles against the Badgers, a performance that put him in the Heisman Trophy conversation.

Ohio State, which dropped to No. 2 in the latest CFP rankings, beat Maryland 73-14 without Young and enters the Rutgers game as a 50-point favorite. Young will return for next week's home game against No. 9 Penn State. Ohio State finishes the regular season at No. 15 Michigan on Nov. 30.

ESPN's Mel Kiper has Young at No. 1 on his Big Board for the 2020 NFL draft and lists the Buckeyes junior as his top defensive prospect.

The Los Angeles Lakers will rest star forward Anthony Davis for the second leg of their back-to-back Wednesday night against the Warriors, according to ESPN's Dave McMenamin and reports.

The Los Angeles Times first reported the Lakers' decision to rest Davis.

Davis has been playing through right shoulder soreness and also took a shot to his ribs during Tuesday's victory over the Suns in Phoenix.

The Lakers said X-rays on Davis' ribs came back negative and that he'll be reevaluated Wednesday.

Ten years ago, only cutting-edge sports scientists knew the term "load management." Today, it is sparking a popular revolt that hit new heights last week when LA Clippers forward Kawhi Leonard sat out a nationally televised game at Utah on the first night of a back-to-back.

This was nothing new: Leonard, who missed most of the 2017-18 season because of tendinopathy in his right quad, hasn't played in both ends of a back-to-back since April 2017. His load management program last season with the Toronto Raptors, in which he played in only 60 regular-season games, helped propel his team to its first NBA championship, and Leonard took home the NBA Finals MVP trophy.

Leonard didn't invent the modern NBA load management regimen, but he might have perfected it -- and he has certainly popularized it. Whether it's Memphis Grizzlies rookie Ja Morant or Dallas Mavericks big man Kristaps Porzingis, more players from more teams than ever are watching regular-season games in street clothes while some old-school critics seethe in disgust. These opponents of load management bemoan an NBA that has gone soft, permitting athletes making tens of millions of dollars with no apparent injuries to sit out games that hard-working fans paid good money to attend.

Load management is among the most debated, least understood issues in the NBA today. It isn't just an indiscriminate excused absence from a regular-season game. It's a program that seeks to have a team's most important contributors playing at optimal health in the biggest moments for many years.

In a real sense, the friction between believers and skeptics exists because the best science (that the density of the NBA schedule elevates injury risk) has come into conflict with NBA folklore (that championships are the pinnacle of success). Given the speed and athleticism deployed in today's game, it's becoming increasingly difficult for players to remain consistently healthy. A good bill of health is a prerequisite for team glory, which can make load management vital.

Leonard will likely sit out another regular-season game Thursday, when the Clippers travel to New Orleans to face the Pelicans. Here's our best intelligence as to why:

What does load management even mean?

Load management is a program employed by NBA teams and players to monitor the physiological stress (or load) a player endures doing any number of activities.

Minutes played in live games is just one of many elements measured when examining a player's load relative to his capacity. A player exerts himself during practices, individual skill sessions, cardio work, dynamic warm-up routines, postgame recovery regimens, cross-country flights, lack of sleep, you name it. All of this info is fed into the load management program, and a group consisting of the player, training staff, sports scientists, coaches, management and, often, ownership collaborate to look at the biometric data and determine when that player is bumping up against his load capacity.

"Loading management is about lowering the threshold of load on a player so that he's able to recover and decrease the risk of injury or chronic fatigue," said Dr. Marcus Elliott, founder and director of the Peak Performance Project.

When a player exceeds his capacity, he's considerably more likely to get injured. Load management is a provision to say of a player suffering from, for example, patella tendinitis, "He's healthy, and he can play ... but if he exerts himself too much, there's a chance he'll then miss significant time."

All of this is done with one overriding goal: Make sure the player is healthiest and at peak fitness when the games matter most.

What's the history here, and what has changed over time?

While we can trace the origins of load management back many years, the term itself seemed to originate in the NBA with the Philadelphia 76ers sitting out Joel Embiid in 2017-18 after he missed his first two seasons due to navicular fractures and much of his rookie campaign due to a knee injury that eventually required arthroscopic surgery. Not coincidentally, this came after the NBA implemented rules regarding "rest" games in September 2017. The league treats management of a specific injury differently than rest, though a memo sent to teams by NBA president of league operations Byron Spruell earlier this week (per Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today) clarified that teams should not use the phrase to report the injury.

Although other teams had followed the Sixers' lead in citing load management by that point, it exploded as an NBA talking point after LeBron James sat out a nationally televised matchup with the Golden State Warriors in February 2019 shortly after returning from a groin strain.

Why are back-to-back games important in this discussion?

For the most part, load management tends to involve back-to-back games. Nearly two-thirds of the games players missed for rest, load management or other precautionary reasons during the 2018-19 season came during back-to-backs. (More than one-third of the others came in the month of April. Load management outside back-to-backs is rare before the end of the season.)

"The body likes to go hard, and then it likes to rest," Elliott said. "It wants to have a chance to adapt to that load you just gave it."

Of the 17 games Leonard has missed due to load management in the past two seasons, 13 have come as part of back-to-backs.

Is there a comp for what's happening with Kawhi right now?

It's common for players to avoid playing both games of a back-to-back when they return from injury. So far this season, Dejounte Murray and Porzingis have sat out games during back-to-backs, and that has been attributed to return from injury (both missed all of last season following ACL tears). Mo Bamba has done the same, and the Orlando Magic are terming it load management after a stress fracture in Bamba's left shin ended his 2018-19 season.

What makes Leonard's situation unique is that his load management has continued for an extended period of time beyond when he was sidelined by his quadriceps injury.

If the Clippers are following the rules, why did Doc Rivers get fined last week?

After speaking with the team's front office and examining Leonard's medical information, the NBA determined Wednesday that the Clippers superstar was sufficiently hobbled by a nagging knee injury to warrant his sitting out a nationally televised game under the NBA's rest management rules. The league issued a statement to this effect, saying, "Kawhi Leonard is not a healthy player under the league's resting policy and, as such, is listed as managing a knee injury in the LA Clippers' injury report. The league office, in consultation with the NBA's director of sports medicine, is comfortable with the team medical staff's determination that Leonard is not sufficiently healthy to play in back-to-back games at this time."

Hours later, Rivers told the media during his pregame news conference that Leonard "feels great." Leonard puts a premium on privacy, particularly on matters relating to his physical condition, and Rivers thought he was protecting his superstar. But the NBA believed that Rivers directly contradicted its statement, which spoke to the fact that Leonard didn't feel great.

In short, the league believed it had gone out on a limb on the Clippers' behalf and didn't appreciate the mixed message. Meanwhile, Rivers thought he was doing right by his player. The conflict demonstrates how complicated things get when player welfare, medical privacy, injury prevention, transparency and best practices are at play.

What do we know about the science here, and what do we not know?

Those who work in the field are confident that incurring loads that stretch an athlete beyond his capacity -- everyone's capacity is different -- greatly increases injury risk. It is rare to find a sports scientist or performance specialist who believes that the NBA season doesn't require some attention to load management to assure that a player has a chance to be at peak performance in the postseason.

Yet even the most knowledgeable specialists will attest that arguments still exist in the literature, whether that's over the field's ability to predict soft-tissue injuries or how reliable a measurement such as the reactive strength index (RSI) is for gauging fatigue by having an athlete perform jumps using a force plate or inertia sensor. In other words, there are more data points available to teams -- many of them interesting and meaningful -- but the interpretation of that information is still an art.

What do we know about the relationship between rest and injuries? How do skipping games and playing fewer minutes differ?

When a player is coping with tendinitis or a degenerative joint, it's understood that rest is almost always the best medicine. A player who takes a DNP is saving himself not just the load that comes with 34 minutes of game action but also the pregame warm-up and that morning's shootaround (if one is scheduled).

When you see an NBA player log a 30-minute outing, that might be a demonstration not of load management but of a determination by the team that the player's effectiveness drops off at a certain threshold. More teams are analyzing the work rates of players based on available data to make decisions about the allocation of minutes.

What about a comp on the other end of the spectrum -- examples of successful 82-game superstar campaigns? Are those comparisons fair?

Everything is fair, and there are plenty of examples of superstars doing superstar things over a 3,000-minute regular season. But the exception doesn't make the rule. Sports scientists who have closely tracked NBA players -- things such as change of direction, deceleration, explosiveness -- say that the magnitude of those movements has increased measurably in recent years.

"The ballistic nature of the sport today combined with the density and length of the season means that the loads placed on these players are really close to what their bodies can manage," Elliott said. "NBA players are getting really good at these movements -- high force over short duration -- but they're tough on the body."

Can you not load enough?

Absolutely. We tend to focus on the restrictive aspect of load management, but it's also vital for players to build up their fitness level in order to be at peak levels for the postseason. For instance, you might see stars on championship contenders playing big minutes and practicing more intensely in early March.

For an athlete who wants to play 40 minutes at maximum output in April and May, building up that fitness level is important, yet he also doesn't want to overload and suffer an injury.

How much of a factor is the 82-game schedule?

"It's integral," Elliott said. "If you have a lower game density, this is not a conversation."

A world in which NBA players participated in two games and two or three practices per week would render many of these load management programs unnecessary. That isn't to say that teams wouldn't closely monitor the physical ailments of their players and prescribe rest when needed, but the current NBA schedule was created at a time when the league had a fraction of the knowledge it has today.

Are there other factors playing a role here?

Some sports scientists such as Elliott have noticed a Catch-22 at work: Today's NBA players are doing more off-court work than ever before, and for good reason. These athletes have learned that in order to have the necessary strength and endurance to weather the season and play deep into their 30s, they need to train to maximize their bodies.

Whether it's increasing lower-body strength or stabilizing their hips, they work hard to be in peak shape. Yet all that training amounts to additional load. That means that in an effort to be a better performing athlete with a longer career, an NBA player is very likely increasing his need for load management.

Do the Clippers care about their playoff seeding? Should they?

Undoubtedly, yes. The Clippers have been picking and choosing which games Leonard misses to minimize the impact of his load management on their record. (So far, based on Leonard's sitting out the more difficult game of their two back-to-back losses, they seem to be minimizing their losses rather than maximizing their wins.) They don't care about their playoff seeding more than having Leonard at peak performance heading into the playoffs.

Ideally, the Clippers would be successful enough without Leonard -- particularly after getting Paul George back this week from offseason surgery on both shoulders -- to claim a top-two seed, like the Raptors did last season. The Raptors ended up winning the Eastern Conference finals without home-court advantage, though that was one of just two playoff series in 2019 won by the lower seed. (The Portland Trail Blazers over the Denver Nuggets was the other.) Home-court advantage definitely matters in the playoffs. A healthy superstar can matter more.

Why does it matter if these load-managed games are on national TV?

The NBA's national broadcast partners (including ESPN) forked over a hefty sum to air NBA games. Like any customer who pays top dollar, they want full value on their purchase, and in a superstar league, superstars drive value.

The NBA not only wants to do right by its partners, but it also regards a nationally televised game as the single best platform to share its product with the public. There are more entertainment options than ever in a world in which homes have multiple streaming services and devices galore, but there isn't much that competes with a transcendent live performance by one of the 10 best basketball players on the planet.

What are the solutions?

The real, lasting solution would be a reduction in the NBA schedule, something the league has tentatively explored. Barring that, some version of load management surely isn't going away, at least not without rules that would create bigger problems by exposing players to greater injury risk.

What the NBA can realistically do in the short term is mitigate the perception of the problem. As both the rest rules and the timing of outcry over load management indicate, national TV games matter more than random ones on the schedule. The NBA would be wise to avoid scheduling teams in back-to-back games on national TV -- particularly the Clippers, given that this all but guarantees Leonard will miss one. Additionally, the league could prioritize avoiding back-to-backs of any kind in conjunction with national TV games to prevent what happened earlier this season, when Leonard sat out a game on national TV before playing the following night.