It is difficult to make players healthy and not lose box office

Qilu Evening News·Qilu One Point Feng Zihan

On May 14, the Boston Celtics officially announced that the star Tatum successfully underwent a right Achilles tendon rupture repair surgery. He has no clear return schedule yet, but he is expected to recover completely. The official statement conveys the value of positive emotionality, but everyone knows that Tatum's injury has been recovering from a long period of time and the future is full of uncertainty.

Entering the playoffs, the league ushered in a wave of injuries, from Morant and Lillard to Mitchell, Curry and Tatum, they were injured one after another. The injury of the main player not only directly affects the team's record, but also makes the league's box office appeal insufficient. How to find a balance between player health and league revenue is a new topic.

In order to extend the "professional life" of players, today's NBA is increasingly relying on load management, and teams often arrange for stars to take turns to rest. This made the league's senior executives unsatisfied: the stars were absent and the game was boring. It not only affects the ratings, but also reduces ticket revenue.

Therefore, the alliance introduced some policies to reduce the occurrence of "meaningless" rotational rest in their opinion.

In addition to banning teams from resting main players in live broadcasts across the United States, the NBA also voted to pass a new policy on star players' resting: teams cannot rest two star players in the same game. In addition, players must participate in at least 65 games before they are eligible to participate in MVP awards, best team awards and other honors.

This is undoubtedly a disguised force of stars to increase their appearances, and some people have suffered a lot. At the beginning of last year, 76ers star Embiid was injured in the game, but because he was still a few games away from being qualified for MVP selection, he had to force his comeback, which resulted in a meniscus tear and was reimbursed for the season.

NBA is still a commercial league, and players are over-consuming like "disposable batteries".

Therefore, there are many voices calling on the league to appropriately "shrink" the regular season so that players can have enough energy to deal with the playoffs. In addition, in terms of schedule, back-to-back competitions and long-distance flights should be reduced to avoid excessive fatigue of players.

In addition to institutional changes, the development of technology is also minimizing the fatigue of stars. The use of liquid nitrogen therapy, stem cell injection, and wearable technology can better help them recover. The most important thing is that only by writing "health priority" into the core logic of the business model can basketball return to its competitive nature and maintain the competitiveness of its core asset.