The concept of “load management” has gained traction throughout the NBA over the past couple of seasons. More and more teams have embraced the practice in an effort to keep their stars fresh throughout the course of the season and into the playoffs. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is a huge fan of load management and he thinks it is “the best thing to ever happen” in the NBA, per Gary Washburn of The Boston Globe.

“I think it’s the best thing to ever happen to the league,” Cuban said this past week. “The problem isn’t load management. I think teams have to be smarter about when they load manage that we have rules in place, if there’s a back-to-back.”

Cuban believes load management is a good way for teams to preserve their stars for the playoffs. He suggested that in the 1980s and ’90s the quality of basketball was hindered by fatigue, with the league’s top players near exhaustion when the postseason arrived.

“Worse than missing a player in a game is missing him in the playoffs,” he said. “And if you go back to the days where guys played 42 minutes a game and there were 10 guys in the league playing 40-plus minutes, the quality of the game wasn’t nearly as good. We gave them a hard time about being worn out or saving themselves for the fourth quarter, and now all the data says you maintain their usage levels over the course of the season with rest, so you’re seeing guys playing 36 minutes, which is a lot.

The San Antonio Spurs have been doing this practice way before it gained league-wide popularity. Remember Tim Duncan getting a DNP-CD for being “old”? Well, that was basically load management.

A former Spur in Kawhi Leonard, currently with the L.A. Clippers, became the poster boy of load management. In his lone season with the Toronto Raptors, Leonard played just 60 games the entire 2018-19 season. That formula proved to work big time for Toronto as Leonard eventually led them to their first title in franchise history last season.

With its success last season, teams are smart to place their stars in such a program so that they can stay healthy throughout the season and into the most important part of the year, the playoffs.

As for Dallas, the Mavs are looking to ease back Kristaps Porzingis into rhythm after missing nearly two years of action. They already committed to placing the Latvian Unicorn in some kind of load management program as he gets his basketball legs back.