Load management has been a hot topic in the NBA in recent years, and Kendrick Perkins believes that the San Anthonio Spurs and Gregg Popovich are at fault for starting the trend years ago, according to Jeff Garcia of KENS5.

“Just like we give Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs all the credit and they just do for creating a hell of an organization, setting the standard for around the league and things to that nature and building culture,” Kendrick Perkins said, via Garcia. “But they're responsible for this. They're the ones that started this. They started this with Tim Duncan. They started this with Manu Ginobili. They started this with Tony Parker.”

Gregg Popovich defended himself from this accusation before, ahead of a game against the Boston Celtics in 2020.

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“I never did load management,” Popovich said. “I never took out a sheet of paper and said ‘he's going to do this, he's going to do that.' Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker played more minutes than anybody in the world ever when you count what they did in the summers for so long and when they started playing pro ball. So it was just logical to try to watch their minutes.”

Regardless of whether you view the Spurs resting of Ginobili, Parker and Tim Duncan as load management, it is clear that Popovich and Perkins disagree on what the term is.

Commissioner Adam Silver said there are ongoing conversations with the Players Association regarding load management, and that this is not a new issue, according to Garcia.