If the New York Knicks secure a top three pick during the 2020 NBA Draft Lottery and eventually go on to select Georgia star Anthony Edwards on draft night, there’s a chance coach Tom Thibodeau could oversee the youngster’s early NBA development. Similar to how Thibs oversaw Derrick Rose’s young career starting with Rose’s third NBA season before all the injuries.
There are rumbles around the NBA and media about Thibodeau’s tough style in terms of heavy game minutes and often long practices. This questions his ability to adapt to a style feasible for the long term health of younger talent.
Could Tom Thibodeau run the younger guys into the ground?
Is there even such a thing as running talent into the ground due to a constant heavy dosage of game minutes? Many have opinions regarding the matter of load management. With the NBA implementing load management for its players, Thibodeau has no choice but to change his vigorous style and adapt to this new era which includes the hot topic of keeping players healthy at least for the postseason.
According to Shaun Powell of nba.com, Peak Performance Project collects data through assessments of a player’s body and his high velocity movements to identify his physical strengths and weaknesses, raise red flags for areas that could be prone to potential injury, and give him and his team information to help improve performance. There’s also training sessions designed to prevent injuries and enhance the muscles and movements needed to reach potential. The training session is a elite athlete optimization that’s suddenly vital to careers.
According to Dr. Marcus Elliott, founder and director of the Peak Performance Project,
“Load 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”.
Anthony Edwards would be fine playing under Coach Thibodeau with these fairly new conditions put in place to protect the talent from career altering injuries. One thing for sure, Edwards has a ton to learn on the defensive end and Thibodeau would mold the young talent into a two-way player similar to Jimmy Butler.